The Great Woman Singer

The Great Woman Singer
Author: Licia Fiol-Matta
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2017-01-06
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0822373467

Licia Fiol-Matta traces the careers of four iconic Puerto Rican singers—Myrta Silva, Ruth Fernández, Ernestina Reyes, and Lucecita Benítez—to explore how their voices and performance style transform the possibilities for comprehending the figure of the woman singer. Fiol-Matta shows how these musicians, despite seemingly intractable demands to represent gender norms, exercised their artistic and political agency by challenging expectations of how they should look, sound, and act. Fiol-Matta also breaks with conceptualizations of the female pop voice as spontaneous and intuitive, interrogating the notion of "the great woman singer" to deploy her concept of the "thinking voice"—an event of music, voice, and listening that rewrites dominant narratives. Anchored in the work of Lacan, Foucault, and others, Fiol-Matta's theorization of voice and gender in The Great Woman Singer makes accessible the singing voice's conceptual dimensions while revealing a dynamic archive of Puerto Rican and Latin American popular music.

I Could Have Sung All Night

I Could Have Sung All Night
Author: Marni Nixon
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780823083657

The most celebrated "voice" in Hollywood speaks for herself! Everyone knows Marni Nixon...even if they think they don’t. One of the best-known and best-loved singing voices in the world, Nixon dubbed songs for Natalie Wood inWest Side Story, Audrey Hepburn inMy Fair Lady, and Deborah Kerr inThe King and I. She was the voice of Hollywood’s leading ladies, arriving in filmland after a debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at 17 and continuing her career with Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Stephen Sondheim, Rogers and Hammerstein, and many others. Her inspiring autobiography reveals Nixon as a singer, an actress, and a woman fighting for artistic recognition. Today, a survivor of breast cancer, she works on Broadway and television’sLaw & Order SVU, tours with her own stage show, and teaches master classes in voice.I Could Have Sung All Nightreveals the woman behind the screen in a frank, funny biography that is as remarkable as the woman whose story it tells. • Beloved show-biz icon Nixon dubbed the singing of Natalie Wood inWest Side Story, Deborah Karr inThe King and I, and Audrey Hepburn inMy Fair Lady—she now tells her story for the first time • Entertaining behind-the-scenes celebrity stories from six decades of performing • Nostalgia appeal, plus insider's account of the music and film worlds of the 20th century • Breast cancer survivor Nixon is an inspiration to millions of women

Singer and the Sewing Machine

Singer and the Sewing Machine
Author: Ruth Brandon
Publisher: Kodansha Globe
Total Pages: 10
Release: 1977
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9781568361468

Women, booze, illegitimate children, fraud, bigamy, 19th-century capitalism, and the emergence of an empire . . . . These words describe the life of Isaac Merritt Singer. Although widely regarded as the inventor of the sewing machine, Singer actually modified an existing machine and marketed it to an America eager for the new tools of the Machine Age. His genius was in the advertising, service with a smile, installment plans, and marketing gimmicks he used to get the sewing machine in homes and sweatshops all over the world. This fascinating and detailed biography provides an insightful and provocative look at the American entrepreneur, unraveling a complex web of personal ambition, fame, fortune, and the attainment of the American Dream. Illustrated.

Philosophy of Love

Philosophy of Love
Author: Irving Singer
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2011-01-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262261162

The author of the classic philosophical treatment of love reflects on the trajectory, over decades, of his thoughts on love and other topics. In 1984, Irving Singer published the first volume of what would become a classic and much acclaimed trilogy on love. Trained as an analytical philosopher, Singer first approached his subject with the tools of current philosophical methodology. Dissatisfied by the initial results (finding the chapters he had written “just dreary and unproductive of anything”), he turned to the history of ideas in philosophy and the arts for inspiration. He discovered an immensity of speculation and artistic practice that reached wholly beyond the parameters he had been trained to consider truly philosophical. In his three-volume work The Nature of Love, Singer tried to make sense of this historical progression within a framework that reflected his precise distinction-making and analytical background. In this new book, he maps the trajectory of his thinking on love. It is a “partial” summing-up of a lifework: partial because it expresses the author's still unfolding views, because it is a recapitulation of many published pages, because love—like any subject of that magnitude—resists a neatly comprehensive, all-inclusive formulation. Adopting an informal, even conversational, tone, Singer discusses, among other topics, the history of romantic love, the Platonic ideal, courtly and nineteenth-century Romantic love; the nature of passion; the concept of merging (and his critique of it); ideas about love in Freud, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dewey, Santayana, Sartre, and other writers; and love in relation to democracy, existentialism, creativity, and the possible future of scientific investigation. Singer's writing on love embodies what he has learned as a contemporary philosopher, studying other authors in the field and “trying to get a little further.” This book continues his trailblazing explorations.

The Time of Our Singing

The Time of Our Singing
Author: Richard Powers
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 642
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374706417

“The last novel where I rooted for every character, and the last to make me cry.” - Marlon James, Elle From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory and the Oprah's Book Club selection Bewilderment comes Richard Powers's magnificent, multifaceted novel about a supremely gifted—and divided—family, set against the backdrop of postwar America. On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson’s epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish émigré scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Black Philadelphian studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and—against all odds and their better judgment—they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped only in song. Jonah, Joseph, and Ruth grow up, however, during the civil rights era, coming of age in the violent 1960s, and living out adulthood in the racially retrenched late century. Jonah, the eldest, “whose voice could make heads of state repent,” follows a life in his parents’ beloved classical music. Ruth, the youngest, devotes herself to community activism and repudiates the white culture her brother represents. Joseph, the middle child and the narrator of this generation-bridging tale, struggles to find himself and remain connected to them both. Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing is a story of self-invention, allegiance, race, cultural ownership, the compromised power of music, and the tangled loops of time that rewrite all belonging.

The Inner Voice

The Inner Voice
Author: Renée Fleming
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2005-09-27
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1101098880

The fascinating personal story of one of the most celebrated talents in today’s music scene The star of the Metropolitan Opera's recent revival of Dvorak's Rusalka, soprano Renée Fleming brings a consummately beautiful voice, striking interpretive talents, and compelling artistry to bear on performances that have captivated audiences in opera houses and recital halls throughout the world. In The Inner Voice—a book that is the story of her own artistic development and the “autobiography” of her voice—this great performer presents a unique and privileged look at the making of a singer and offers hard-won, practical advice to aspiring performance artists everywhere. From her youth as the child of two singing teachers through her years at Juilliard, from her struggles to establish her career to her international success, The Inner Voice is a luminous, articulate, and candid self-portrait of a contemporary artist—and the most revelatory examination yet of the performing life.

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told
Author: Megan Mullally
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101986670

*A New York Times Bestseller* Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman reveal the full story behind their epic romance—presented in a series of intimate conversations between the couple, including photos, anecdotes, and the occasional puzzle. The year: 2000. The setting: Los Angeles. A gorgeous virtuoso of an actress agreed to star in a random play, and a basement-dwelling scenic carpenter said he would assay a supporting role in the selfsame pageant. At the first rehearsal she surveyed her fellow cast members, determining if any of the men might qualify to provide her with a satisfying fling. Her gaze fell upon the carpenter, and like a bolt of lightning the thought struck her: no dice. Moving on. Yet, unbeknownst to our protagonists, Cupid had merely set down his bow and picked up a rocket launcher...that fired a love rocket (not a euphemism). The players were Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman, and the resulting romance, once ignited, was...epic. Beyond epic. It resulted in a coupling that has endured to this day; a sizzling, perpetual tryst that has captivated the world with its kindness, athleticism, astonishingly low-brow humor, and true (fire emoji) passion. How did they do it? They came from completely different families, ignored a significant age difference, and were separated by the gulf of several social strata. Megan loved books and art history; Nick loved hammers. But much more than these seemingly unsurpassable obstacles were the values they held in common: respect, decency, the ability to mention genitalia in almost any context, and an abiding obsession with the songs of Tom Waits. Eighteen years later, they're still very much in love and have finally decided to reveal the philosophical mountains they have conquered, the lessons they've learned, and the myriad jigsaw puzzles they've completed. Presented as an oral history in a series of conversations between the couple, the book features anecdotes, hijinks, photos, and a veritable grab bag of tomfoolery. This is not only the intoxicating book that Mullally's and Offerman's fans have been waiting for, it might just hold the solution to the greatest threat facing our modern world: the single life.

Crystal Singer

Crystal Singer
Author: Anne McCaffrey
Publisher: Del Rey
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2002-02-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345457455

“No dragons, but [Crystal Singer] has all of [Anne] McCaffrey's gifts for world-building and characterization . . . an excellent book.”—Chicago Sun-Times Her name was Killashandra Ree; and after ten grueling years of musical training she was young, beautiful—and still without prospects. Then she heard of the mysterious Heptite Guild on the planet Ballybran, where the fabled Black Crystal was found. For those qualified, the Guild was said to provide careers, security, and the chance for wealth beyond imagining. The problem was, few people who landed on Ballybran ever left. To Killashandra the risks were acceptable . . .

Bad Singer

Bad Singer
Author: Tim Falconer
Publisher: House of Anansi
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2016-05-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1770894462

In the tradition of Daniel Levitin’s This Is Your Brain on Music and Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia, Bad Singer follows the delightful journey of Tim Falconer as he tries to overcome tone deafness — and along the way discovers what we’re really hearing when we listen to music. Tim Falconer, a self-confessed “bad singer,” always wanted to make music, but soon after he starts singing lessons, he discovers that he’s part of only 2.5 percent of the population afflicted with amusia — in other words, he is scientifically tone-deaf. Bad Singer chronicles his quest to understand human evolution and music, the brain science behind tone-deafness, his search for ways to retrain the adult brain, and his investigation into what we really hear when we listen to music. In an effort to learn more about his brain disorder, he goes to a series of labs where the scientists who test him are as fascinated with him as he is with them. He also sets out to understand why we love music and deconstructs what we really hear when we listen to it. And he unlocks the secret that helps explain why music has such emotional power over us.