New York Voices: Fourteen Portraits - Hardcover

Balliett, Whitney

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1578068363 ISBN 13: 9781578068364

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi, 2006

Synopsis

Renowned jazz critic Whitney Balliett loves New York. A longtime columnist and critic for the New Yorker, he has written about the city's artistic side and night life for fifty years. In many ways his writings have helped define the culture of a metropolis where artistic activity is a major attraction.

In New York Voices Balliett moves beyond the portraits of jazz artists for which he is most famous to write biographies of fourteen gifted people from abroad and around the United States. They settled in New York, celebrated it, and rose to the top of their professions. Each of these portraits focuses on an individual who makes a living in the arts and whose work contains a strong improvisational element. As with the best jazz musicians, many of these individuals work with live audiences and without a safety net.

Those portrayed include nightclub owners Barney Josephson, Bradley Cunningham, and Max Gordon; comedians Jackie Mason and Bob and Ray; painter Jon Schueler; entrepreneur, writer, and director Julius Monk; and Lola Szladits, who oversees the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library.

Whitney Balliett wrote for the New Yorker for fifty years and was the jazz critic there for over forty years. He is the author of many books, including American Musicians II: Seventy-one Portraits in Jazz, American Singers: Twenty-seven Portraits in Song, and Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954-2001. He received an award for excellence in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and three of his books on jazz have won awards from ASCAP.

About this title

Book Description:

Profiles of the artists, music makers, and movers and shakers who created New York City?s vibrant cultural landscape

From the Publisher:

These profiles of the artists who create New York City’s vibrant cultural landscape:

*Offer a new collection of essays by Whitney Balliett, famous and well-respected jazz critic for the New Yorker

*Provide a great look for New Yorkers and will be special for anyone who subscribes to the New Yorker or follows the city’s artistic life

*Illuminate some of the people who make New York so inimitably New York

*Feature three comedians (Bob & Ray, Jackie Mason), an Americana dealer (John Gordon), a radio and film producer (Jean Bach), a harpist (Daphne Hellman), a tubist (Harvey Phillips), an entrepreneur (Julius Monk), a librarian (Lola Szladits), three nightclub owners (Max Gordon, Barney Josephson, and Bradley Cunningham), and a painter and his art historian wife (Jon Schueler and Magda Salvesen)

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1578068363
• ISBN 13: 9781578068364
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216