THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, nominated for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor for Timothee Chalamet.

On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at Newport Folk Festival, backed by an electric band, and roared into his new rock hit, Like a Rolling Stone. The audience of committed folk purists and political activists who had hailed him as their acoustic prophet reacted with a mix of shock, booing, and scattered cheers. It was the shot heard round the world--Dylan's declaration of musical independence, the end of the folk revival, and the birth of rock as the voice of a generation--and one of the defining moments in twentieth-century music.

In Dylan Goes Electric!, Elijah Wald explores the cultural, political and historical context of this seminal event that embodies the transformative decade that was the sixties. Wald delves deep into the folk revival, the rise of rock, and the tensions between traditional and groundbreaking music to provide new insights into Dylan's artistic evolution, his special affinity to blues, his complex relationship to the folk establishment and his sometime mentor Pete Seeger, and the ways he reshaped popular music forever. Breaking new ground on a story we think we know, Dylan Goes Electric! is a thoughtful, sharp appraisal of the controversial event at Newport and a nuanced, provocative, analysis of why it matters.

In this tour de force, Elijah Wald complicates the stick-figure myth of generational succession at Newport by doing justice to what he rightly calls Bob Dylan's 'declaration of independence' . . . This is one of the very best accounts I've read of musicians fighting for their honor. -- Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties and Occupy Nation

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

An unsparing investigation into Spotify's origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike.

Drawing on over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today's highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed.

Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The music business is notoriously opaque, but here Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices.

For all of the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Pelly also finds hope in chronicling the artist-led fight for better models, pointing toward what must be done collectively to revalue music and create sustainable systems. A timely exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music, Mood Machine will change the way you think about and listen to music.

Drawn from NPR Music's acclaimed, groundbreaking series Turning the Tables, the definitive book on the vital role of Women in Music--from Beyoncé to Odetta, Taylor Swift to Joan Baez, Joan Jett to Dolly Parton--featuring archival interviews, essays, photographs, and illustrations.

Turning the Tables, launched in 2017, has revolutionized recognition of female artists, whether it be in best album lists or in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music brings this impressive reshaping to the page and includes material from more than fifty years of NPR's coverage plus newly commissioned work. A must-have for music fans, songwriters, feminist historians, and those interested in how artists think and work, including:

Joan Baez talking about nonviolence as a musical principle in 1971Dolly Parton's favorite song and the story behind it Patti Smith describing art as her jealous mistress in 1974Nina Simone, in 2001, explaining how she developed the edge in her voice as a tool against racismTaylor Swift talking about when she had no idea if her musical career might workOdetta on how shifting from classical music to folk allowed her to express her fury over Jim Crow

This incomparable hardcover volume is a vital record of history destined to become a classic and a great gift for any music fan or creative thinker.

Talkin' Greenwich Village is impeccably researched, elegantly written and consistently fascinating.--New York Times

Browne relates the extensive cast of characters and historical events with journalistic clarity and cinematic scope--so much so that it'll send you back to [A Complete Unknown] to identify who's who in the bit parts.--The Oakland Press

***A Rolling Stone Best Music Book of 2024***

The definitive history of the rise and heyday of the revolutionary Greenwich Village music scene, based on new research and first-hand interviews with many of its legendary performers

Although Greenwich Village encompasses less than a square mile in downtown New York, rarely has such a concise area nurtured so many innovative artists and genres. Over the course of decades, Billie Holiday, the Weavers, Sonny Rollins, Dave Van Ronk, Ornette Coleman, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Phil Ochs, and Suzanne Vega are just a few who migrated to the Village, recognizing it as a sanctuary for visionaries, non-conformists, and those looking to reinvent themselves. Working in the Village's smokey coffeehouses and clubs, they chronicled the tumultuous Sixties, rewrote jazz history, and took folk and rock & roll into places they hadn't been before.

Based on over 150 new interviews (Judy Collins, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Eric Andersen, Suzzy and Terre Roche, Suzanne Vega, Steve Forbert, Arlo Guthrie, John Sebastian, Shawn Colvin, the members of the Blues Project, and more), previously unseen documents, and author David Browne's longtime immersion in the scene, Talkin' Greenwich Village lends the saga the epic, panoramic scope it's long deserved. It takes readers from the Fifties jamborees in Washington Square Park and into landmark venues like Gerde's Folk City, the Gaslight Café, and the Village Vanguard, onto Dylan's momentous arrival and returns, the no-holds-barred Seventies years (West Village discos, National Lampoon's Lemmings), and the folk revival of the Eighties (Vega's enduring Tom's Diner).

In eye-opening fashion, Browne also details the often-overlooked people of color in the Sixties folk clubs, reveals how the FBI and city government consistently kept their eyes on the community, unearths the machinations behind the infamous beatnik riot in Washington Square Park, and tells the interconnected tales of Van Ronk, the seminal band the Blues Project, and the beloved sister trio, the Roches.

In also recounting the racial tensions, crackdowns, and changes in New York and music that infiltrated the neighborhood, Talkin' Greenwich Village is more than just vivid cultural history. It also speaks to the rise and waning of bohemian culture itself, set to some of the most enduring lyrics, melodies, and jazz improvisations in American music.

From hits to history, explore the impact of R&B's iconic groups that shaped our culture.

R&B groups once dominated the airwaves, shaping generations with their rhythms. But as the industry evolved, these iconic voices vanished from the charts, leaving music lovers to wonder: What happened? DJ and music historian Amani Roberts unravels the mystery behind the rise, influence, and decline of R&B groups. Drawing from extensive industry knowledge, Roberts offers an insider's look into the evolution of the genre, spanning from the 1950s to the early 2000s-from chart-topping hits and cultural revolutions to the hidden dynamics behind the music.

Discover the untold stories and memorable rhythms behind the R&B groups that laid the foundation for today's music. From the soulful melodies of the 1960s to the funk-infused beats of the 1980s, explore how these groups drove social change, influenced popular culture, and battled the changing tides of the music business as technology shifted how music was made. Roberts explains why these acts were left behind-and what can be done to bring their legacy back.

Inside, you'll learn:

-Comprehensive history from the 1950s to the early 2000s, highlighting over 60 iconic groups and their impact, from The Drifters to Destiny's Child.

-The untold stories behind the hits and the hidden struggles these groups faced.

-A critical look at the music industry's transformation from the rise of hip-hop to the shift to music streaming and how it reshaped R&B forever.

-Behind-the scenes stories of industry politics, from record label disputes to racial segregation policies that affected the careers and success of legendary groups.

-Forward-looking ideas on how the legacy of R&B groups can be revived in today's music.

Perfect for R&B enthusiasts, music historians, and anyone who has ever felt the pull of a soulful ballad, The Quiet Storm is more than a walk through musical history. Filled with personal anecdotes and emotional stories, this definitive guide will help music lovers rediscover the magic that made R&B music unforgettable.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - David Byrne's incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social, or technological--now updated with a new chapter on digital curation.

How Music Works is a buoyant hybrid of social history, anthropological survey, autobiography, personal philosophy, and business manual--The Boston Globe

Utilizing his incomparable career and inspired collaborations with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and many others, David Byrne taps deeply into his lifetime of knowledge to explore the panoptic elements of music, how it shapes the human experience, and reveals the impetus behind how we create, consume, distribute, and enjoy the songs, symphonies, and rhythms that provide the backbeat of life. Byrne's magnum opus uncovers thrilling realizations about the redemptive liberation that music brings us all.

Discover the Music that Changed Everything

Embark on a complex and inspiring journey through the last 101 years as told through some of the most memorable hits and the artists behind them.

Noah Lefevre, creator of Polyphonic, explores how our favorite music does more than entertain. From Aretha Franklin carving out her own space in what had been considered a man's world by reworking the chauvinistic lyrics to the 1967's hit Respect, to Doja Cat's successful backlash against toxic fans of the digital age; from a broken amplifier on Rocket 88 ushering in the distorted sounds of rock n' roll, to Kendrick Lamar's release of Alright, which became the unofficial anthem to the BLM protests--each song mirrors the strife, change and progress of our country's narrative. In this rich and engrossing guide for music lovers everywhere, you'll discover how a single song can make history.

What does it mean to be human in a world where machines, too, can be artists? The Uncanny Muse explores the history of automation in the arts and delves into one of the most momentous and controversial aspects of AI: artificial creativity. The adoption of technology and machinery has long transformed the world, but as the potential for artificial intelligence expands, David Hajdu examines the new, increasingly urgent questions about technology's role in culture.

From the life-size mechanical doll that made headlines in Victorian London to the doll's modern AI-pop star counterpart, Hajdu traces the fascinating, varied ways in which inventors and artists have sought to emulate mental processes and mechanize creative production. For decades, machines and artists have engaged in expressing the human condition--along with the condition of living with machines--through player pianos, broadcasting technology, electric organs, digital movie effects, synthesizers, and motion capture. By communicating and informing human knowledge, the machines have exerted considerable influence on the history of art--and often more influence than humans have been willing to recognize. As Hajdu proclaims: before machine learning, there was machine teaching.

With thoughtful, wide-ranging, and surprising turns from Berry Gordy and George Harrison to Andy Warhol and Stevie Wonder, David Hajdu takes a novel and contrarian approach: he sees how machines through the ages have enabled creativity, not stifled it--and The Uncanny Muse sees no reason why this shouldn't be the case with AI today.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES, NPR - WINNER OF THREE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS - Finalist for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction - A stirring account of how music bears witness to history and carries forward the memory of the wartime past - SUNDAY TIMES OF LONDON HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR

In 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal Ode to Joy, he crystallized the deepest hopes and dreams of the European Enlightenment for a new era of peace and freedom, a time when millions would be embraced as equals. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony then gave wing to Schiller's words, but barely a century later these same words were claimed by Nazi propagandists and twisted by a barbarism so complete that it ruptured, as one philosopher put it, the deep layer of solidarity among all who wear a human face.

When it comes to how societies remember these increasingly distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of history books, archives, documentaries, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time's Echo, the award-winning critic and cultural historian Jeremy Eichler makes a passionate and revelatory case for the power of music as culture's memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past.

With a critic's ear, a scholar's erudition, and a novelist's eye for detail, Eichler shows how four towering composers--Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten--lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving, transcendent works of music, scores that echo lost time. Summoning the supporting testimony of writers, poets, philosophers, musicians, and everyday citizens, Eichler reveals how the essence of an entire epoch has been inscribed in these sounds and stories. Along the way, he visits key locations central to the music's creation, from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral to the site of the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv.

As the living memory of the Second World War fades, Time's Echo proposes new ways of listening to history, and learning to hear between its notes the resonances of what another era has written, heard, dreamed, hoped, and mourned. A lyrical narrative full of insight and compassion, this book deepens how we think about the legacies of war, the presence of the past, and the renewed promise of art for our lives today.

ONE OF PITCHFORK'S BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF 2023

Now in paperback, a companion to the #1 music podcast on Spotify, this book takes readers through the greatest hits that define a weirdly undefinable decade.

The 1990s were a chaotic and gritty and utterly magical time for music, a confounding barrage of genres and lifestyles and superstars, from grunge to hip-hop, from sumptuous R&B to rambunctious ska-punk, from Axl to Kurt to Missy to Santana to Tupac to Britney. In 60 SONGS THAT EXPLAIN THE '90s, Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.

This rockin' paperback explores the musical evolution of Seattle through the lens of 101 songs spanning 80 years, examining the most prominent and important music and musicians to come out of our corner of the country, with a foreword by Pearl Jam legend Mike McCready.

KEXP DJ and musician Eva Walker and music writer Jake Uitti take readers on a musical journey, exploring the songs and artists instrumental to developing the Seattle sound. The authors have curated the ultimate playlist for the Emerald City. It all begins in 1942 when Washington-born Bing Crosby records what will become the world's bestselling single of all time, White Christmas. From there, readers will delight in a sensory trip through jazz, rock, punk, riot grrrl, pop, rap, grunge, indie, emo, and more, deepening their knowledge and love of the songs that shaped Seattle, and in the process, each of us.

Both a love letter and love song to the city, The Sound of Seattle is a visual guide organized by decade, with seminal songs profiled and paired with inventive design reminiscent of a favorite zine or concert poster. Includes interviews with Seattle legends like Heart's Nancy Wilson, as well as sidebars showcasing musical landmarks throughout the city.

How has the Emerald City's musical output changed and evolved? What is the connective tissue between Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, and Kenny G? Between Melvins, Sleater-Kinney, and Foo Fighters? Between Sir Mix-a-Lot, Macklemore, and Travis Thompson? We're gonna find out!

Leonard Cohen is a literary masterpiece -- the seminal, comprehensive biography of a multitalented man who wrote more than his share of literary masterpieces himself. -- Foreword, Starred Review

With plenty of photographs, including of Cohen at his dapper best, this is a book to get lost in. -- Booklist, Starred Review

An in-depth and amorous discussion of Cohen's life and work, fans old and new will find this page-turner a refreshing take on the singer's engagement with a broken heart and the laws of gravity.

Leonard Cohen has aimed high: to be all Jewish heroes at once. Like Jacob, he struggled with angels. Like David, he sang psalms and seduced women. Like Abraham, he moved from place to place and remained a stranger everywhere. But he never ceased doing what he did best: stepping into avalanches and reviving our hearts. From Montreal and New York to the Greek island of Hydra, Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall follows the singer's cosmopolitan life and examines his perpetual dialogues with God, with himself, and with hotel rooms.

After more than two decades of research, Christophe Lebold, who spent time with the poet in Los Angeles, delivers a stimulating analysis of Cohen's life and art. Gracefully blending biography and essay, he interrogates the mission Cohen set out for himself: to show us that darkness is just the flip side of light.

Joining the ranks of the classics Please Kill Me, Our Band Could Be Your Life, and Can't Stop Won't Stop, an intriguing oral history of the post-9/11 decline of the old-guard music industry and rebirth of the New York rock scene, led by a group of iconoclastic rock bands.

In the second half of the twentieth-century New York was the source of new sounds, including the Greenwich Village folk scene, punk and new wave, and hip-hop. But as the end of the millennium neared, cutting-edge bands began emerging from Seattle, Austin, and London, pushing New York further from the epicenter. The behemoth music industry, too, found itself in free fall, under siege from technology. Then 9/11/2001 plunged the country into a state of uncertainty and war--and a dozen New York City bands that had been honing their sound and style in relative obscurity suddenly became symbols of glamour for a young, web-savvy, forward-looking generation in need of an anthem.

Meet Me in the Bathroom charts the transformation of the New York music scene in the first decade of the 2000s, the bands behind it--including The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, and Vampire Weekend--and the cultural forces that shaped it, from the Internet to a booming real estate market that forced artists out of the Lower East Side to Williamsburg. Drawing on 200 original interviews with James Murphy, Julian Casablancas, Karen O, Ezra Koenig, and many others musicians, artists, journalists, bloggers, photographers, managers, music executives, groupies, models, movie stars, and DJs who lived through this explosive time, journalist Lizzy Goodman offers a fascinating portrait of a time and a place that gave birth to a new era in modern rock-and-roll.

The fascinating story behind the making of Bruce Springsteen's most surprising album, Nebraska, revealing its pivotal role in Springsteen's career--in development as a major motion picture starring Jeremy Allen White (The Bear)

Brilliant . . . For fans of American music, Deliver Me from Nowhere makes a great ghost story.--The Boston Globe

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen's hugely successful album The River should have been the hit-packed Born in the U.S.A. But instead, in 1982, he came out with an album consisting of a series of dark songs he had recorded by himself, for himself. But more than forty years later, Nebraska is arguably Springsteen's most important record--the lasting clue to understanding not just his career as an artist and the vision behind it, but also the man himself.

Nebraska is rough and unfinished, recorded on cassette tape with a simple four-track recorder by Springsteen, alone in his bedroom, just as the digital future was announcing itself. And yet Springsteen now considers it his best album. Nebraska expressed a turmoil that was reflective of the mood of the country, but it was also a symptom of trouble in the artist's life, the beginnings of a mental breakdown that Springsteen would only talk about openly decades after the album's release.

Warren Zanes spoke to many people involved with making Nebraska, including Bruce Springsteen himself. He also interviewed more than a dozen celebrated artists and musical insiders, from Rosanne Cash to Steven Van Zandt, about their reactions to the album. Zanes interweaves these conversations with inquiries into the myriad cultural touchpoints, including Terrence Malick's Badlands and the short stories of Flannery O'Conner, that influenced Springsteen as he was writing the album's haunting songs. The result is a textured and revelatory account of not only a crucial moment in the career of an icon but also a record that upended all expectations and predicted a home-recording revolution.

Down On The Corner is the story of music performed on the streets, in subways, in parks, in schoolyards, on the back of flatbed trucks, and beyond, from the 1920s to the present day.

One day around 1970, my father announced to me that he'd like to take me to Maxwell Street Market, an open-air flea market adjacent to Downtown Chicago. He wanted to show me where his parents used to take him shopping as a child. When he parked his car in the University Of Illinois lot, the first thing I heard, long before I could see where it was coming from, was the sound of a slide guitar--not just any guitar but a National steel resonator guitar. We followed the music and found ourselves standing on the west side of Halsted Street, midway between Roosevelt and Maxwell, where Blind Arvella Gray was playing the folk/blues song 'John Henry'--a song that seemed to have no beginning and no end. Sensing that his audience was generally passing by rather than gathering around, Gray kept playing that one song for his entire shift. He'd even altered the lyrics to refer to the local streets. In that moment, I developed a lifelong affinity for the informality, spontaneity, and audience participation of busking.

Drawing on years of interviews and eyewitness accounts, Down On The Corner introduces readers to a wide range of locations and a myriad of musical genres, from folk to rock'n'roll, the blues to bluegrass, doo-wop to indie rock. Some of the performers he features--Lucinda Williams, Billy Bragg, The Violent Femmes--went on to become international stars; others settled into the curbs, sidewalks, and Tube stations as their workplace for the duration of their careers. Anyone who has lived in or travelled through a city will have encountered street musicians of one kind or another. For the first time, veteran journalist and music-industry publicist Cary Baker tells the complete history of these musicians and the music they play, from tin cups and toonies to QR codes and PayPal.

'This book allows us to hear the full story of feeding the street, as it has been done for over a century in the United States. It gives us a glimpse into the lives of the buskers who have enriched our daily existence with music and performance art. It's a dollar in the hat, with the acknowledgment that the world is always a better place when busking is a part of the picture. Special thanks to Cary Baker for giving a new voice to a music tradition that will continue to live on forever and will find new homes wherever the music takes it.' Dom Flemons, from his foreword to this book

--A Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year
--An Uncut Book of the Year
--Long-Listed for the Penderyn Music Book Prize
--A Louder Than War Book of the Year
--A Blitzed Magazine Book of the Year

In 1979, 2 Tone Records exploded into the consciousness of music lovers in Britain, the US, and beyond, as albums by the Specials, the Selecter, Madness, the English Beat, and the Bodysnatchers burst onto the charts and a youth movement was born. 2 Tone was Black and white: a multiracial force of British and Caribbean musicians singing about social issues, racism, class, and gender struggles. It spoke of injustices in society and fought against rightwing extremism. It was exuberant and eclectic: white youths learning to dance to the infectious rhythm of ska and reggae, crossed with a punk attitude, to create an original hybrid.

The idea of 2 Tone was born in Coventry, England, and masterminded by a middle-class art student, Jerry Dammers, who envisioned an English Motown. Dammers signed a slew of successful artists, and a number of successive hits propelled 2 Tone onto Top of the Pops and into the hearts and minds of a generation. However, infighting among the bands and the pressures of running a label caused 2 Tone to bow to the inevitable weight of expectation and recrimination. Over the following years, Dammers built the label back up again, entering a new phase full of fresh signings and a beautiful end-piece finale in the activist hit song (Free) Nelson Mandela.

Told in three parts, Too Much Too Young is the definitive story of a label that for a brief, bright burning moment shaped British, American, and world culture.

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism
A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year
Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007

Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007
A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007

In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.

Have you ever wanted to learn more about hymns, but weren't sure where to start? In this follow-up to his bestselling original book, pastor Robert J. Morgan shares the incredible stories behind 150 beloved traditional hymns of faith.

Each week millions of Christians around the world use hymns composed by believers from every era and branch of Christianity to join voices in praise--singing psalms and hymns, making melody in their hearts to praise the Lord. Pastor Robert Morgan's goal is to keep these traditional hymns vital and meaningful to all generations.

Then Sings My Soul: Book 2 will help readers reacquaint themselves with 150 additional beloved hymns of the faithful. These devotional-style stories show the emotion and drama behind the hymns of faith that have changed many lives throughout history--from the people whose faith led them to write these wonderful hymns to the people whose faith was affected by reading, hearing, and singing them.

Then Sings My Soul: Book 2 contains:

• Words and music to 150 traditional hymns not included in the first book
• Short, devotional-style stories providing context on each hymn
• Hymn index for easy reference
• Perfect for use as a daily devotional, teaching illustration, or for song leaders and music ministers

The original Then Sings My Soul was an instant classic with more than 1.3 million copies sold. Then Sings My Soul: Book 2 is also designed to be personally reflective, with lyrics and stories behind the hymns that will speak to your soul, strengthen your faith, and deepen your understanding of God as you worship Him through song.

Over the course of 34 years, Thomas W. Morris worked at the top levels of the symphony orchestra world, running two of the biggest and most famous, the Boston Symphony and The Cleveland Orchestra. He commissioned music from the world's most important composers, interacted with the greatest musical artists and produced thousands of concerts. He worked closely with Arthur Fiedler, famed conductor of the Boston Pops, bringing him into America's living rooms through the creation of PBS's Evening at Pops. He camped out at film composer John Williams' London apartment to persuade him to succeed Fiedler at the Pops. He presented multi-media concerts with Pierre Boulez and schemed with Oliver Knussen on programming and contemporary music. He collaborated with Christoph von Dohnányi at The Cleveland Orchestra to produce what has been called one of its golden periods. In all of it he became obsessed with the art of musical programming and creative partnerships.

But throughout, he had the growing realization that American orchestras had become ingrown on themselves, with rigid structures and cultures that conspired to perpetuate those structures rather than the music they were built to create and feed the audiences hungry for inspiration. Stepping back from running orchestras, he became a consultant, expanding his exposure to the inner workings of many arts organizations across the US and Europe. It confirmed his sense of institutional malaise.

Looking to experiment with his evolving insights, he became artistic director of California's tiny yet mighty Ojai Music Festival. Its size, its setting, its unique structure and a history stretching back through a long line of some of the world's most innovative and influential musicians and composers made for a vehicle that could be both wildly creative and endlessly flexible. Over 16 seasons, Morris collaborated with an ever-widening cast of artists and thinkers such as George Benjamin, Leif Ove Andsnes, Mark Morris, Steven Schick, Peter Sellars, Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Barbara Hannigan - each one forging fiercely independent and differing artistic paths but united in commitment to high artistry and innovation. Morris reimagined musical experiences by challenging all aspects of making music and producing concerts. As The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross wrote of the 2015 festival: To attend Ojai is to enter a happily topsy-turvy world where longtime patrons are as avid for new music as they are for classic repertory.

Always The Music is the fascinating story of Morris' personal metamorphosis through the highest levels of the world of classical music, his learning and insights into how storied musical institutions function, great artists create, and audiences engage. The final chapter synthesizes Morris' career lessons into an unequivocal but thoughtful prescription for the American orchestra. Mostly, though, this is the entertaining story of one man's lifelong love affair with great music and the people who make it.

The coolest class on campus - The New York Times

***Revised and updated with a new Afterword from the author.***

When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter who wouldn't even deign to attend the medal ceremony?

In Why Bob Dylan Matters, Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers this question with magisterial erudition. A world expert on Classical poetry, Thomas was initially ridiculed by his colleagues for teaching a course on Bob Dylan alongside his traditional seminars on Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. Dylan's Nobel Prize brought him vindication, and he immediately found himself thrust into the spotlight as a leading academic voice in all matters Dylanological. Today, through his wildly popular Dylan seminar--affectionately dubbed Dylan 101--Thomas is introducing a new generation of fans and scholars to the revered bard's work.

This witty, personal volume is a distillation of Thomas's famous course, and makes a compelling case for moving Dylan out of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and into the pantheon of Classical poets. Asking us to reflect on the question, What makes a classic?, Thomas offers an eloquent argument for Dylan's modern relevance, while interpreting and decoding Dylan's lyrics for readers. The most original and compelling volume on Dylan in decades, Why Bob Dylan Matters will illuminate Dylan's work for the Dylan neophyte and the seasoned fanatic alike. You'll never think about Bob Dylan in the same way again.

This updated edition, complete with a new afterword exploring how Dylan crafts his song lyrics, is the perfect companion for fans of the legendary musician.