New Books in Music

Mar 25 2025 755 ep. 58 mins 705

New Books in Music Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Music about their New Books

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Paul R. Laird and Elizabeth A. Wells, "The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Mar 25 2025 64 mins

Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colossus of musical and dramatic achievement. It not only helped define a generation of musical theatre lovers but is among the handful of shows that have contributed to our understanding of American musical identity at mid-century. Bringin

Simon Morrison, "Tchaikovsky's Empire: A New Life of Russia's Greatest Composer" (Yale UP, 2024)

Mar 25 2025 37 mins

Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we think we know is a shadow of the fascinating reality. It is all too easy to forget that he composed an empire's worth of music, and navigated the imperial Russian court to great advantage. In this iconoclastic biography, celebrated au

Radha Kapuria and Vebhuti Duggal, "Punjab Sounds: In and Beyond the Region" (Routledge, 2024)

Mar 19 2025 69 mins

Punjab Sounds (Routledge, 2024) nuances our understanding of the region's imbrications with sound. It argues that rather than being territorially bounded, the region only emerges in 'regioning', i.e., in words, gestures, objects, and techniques that do the region. Regioning sound reveals the relationship between sound and the region in three interlinked ways: in doing, knowing, and

Lauren E. Osborne, "Hearing Islam: The Sounds of a Global Religious Tradition" (Routledge, 2024)

Mar 15 2025 101 mins

In Hearing Islam: The Sounds of a Global Religious Tradition, Lauren Osborne delves into the sonic dimensions of Islam, exploring how the tradition’s rich soundscape offers deep insights into culture, identity, and spirituality. In this innovative work, Osborne shifts the focus from the written word to the auditory, asking, "What can we learn about Islam when we enter through its

John Cage: Echoes of the Anechoic

Mar 10 2025 29 mins

Today we explore the mythology around John Cage’s visit to the anechoic chamber. The chamber was designed to completely eliminate echoes. Ironically, the tale of Cage’s experience in that space has echoed through history, affecting our understanding of silence, sound, and the self. But what do we really know about what happened there? And what could we ever know about such an e

Ariane Sherine, "The Real Sinéad O'Connor" (White Owl, 2024)

Mar 08 2025 51 mins

Sinéad O'Connor, renowned for her angelic voice and activism, overcame a tumultuous upbringing to become a global protest singer and advocate for social justice. O'Connor achieved worldwide success as an angel-voiced, shaven-headed Irish singer of heartfelt songs, but she was far more than just a pop star - she was also an activist and a survivor. Reeling from a troubled childhood

Richard Heppner, "Woodstock: From World War to Culture Wars" (SUNY Press, 2024)

Mar 07 2025 26 mins

Few towns in America are as famous as Woodstock, New York—although Woodstock may be most famous for an event that happened many miles away! Long before the 1969 Woodstock festival put the town on the map, it had been a center for artists and free thinkers who found refuge in its rural setting. Longtime citizens were often shocked by the arrival of these newcomers who brought new

Simona Valeriani, "The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences" (Brepols, 2024)

Mar 05 2025 60 mins

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a

Elizabeth T. Craft, "Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Mar 05 2025 50 mins

George M. Cohan was one of those rare Broadway figures who was a composer, lyricist, playwright, performer, director, theater owner, and star actor. He could, quite literally, do it all. In his day, he was famous as the "Yankee Doodle Boy" from his hit song and as the "Man Who Owned Broadway" from his musical of the same name. Cohan's songs and shows captured the spirit of an era w

Paul Lisicky, "Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell" (HarperOne, 2025)

Mar 04 2025 22 mins

Paul Lisicky remembers when he first heard Joni Mitchell on the radio, and when he found one of her records in a bin at Korvettes. He was inspired by her musicality, her poetry, and her willingness to defy musical conventions. Nearly every one of her songs spoke to him in some way. As a budding songwriter whose music was widely performed in churches around the country, he was motiv