Kirjahaku

A #1 New Release in Jazz Music on Amazon "Absolutely essential reading." -- The Wire One of modern music's towering figures, composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton has redefined critical concepts of jazz and the wider world of creative music. The Chicago native's works range from an early piece for 100 tubas to proposed compositions for orchestras on different planets. A modern classic, Forces in Motion follows Braxton's lauded quartet on a 1985 tour of England, noting his opinions of his musical predecessors -- including Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Karlheinz Stockhausen -- as well as his thoughts on racism and poverty. For this new 30th anniversary edition, Graham Lock provides a new chapter, detailing later encounters with Braxton and the quartet; Anthony Braxton has penned a new Afterword as well. In addition to inside views of the mind of a musical visionary, this book offers an entertaining chronicle of a touring band. Braxton's subjects run the gamut from chess and hamburgers to astrology, feminism, and ancient Egypt. Above all, it offers a captivating view of the frustrations and rewards that result from an artist's dedication of his life to creative music. "This book should be required reading for anyone interested in my music," Anthony Braxton has observed. "Graham Lock writes from the perceptual plane of insight and dedication -- coupled with a keen wit and a dynamic intellect. This is serious writing and thinking. I could not have been more fortunate." "Remarkable. One of the most thorough and honest accounts you'll find of what it means to make truly uncompromising art in America. It's also, thanks to Lock's conversational, unpretentious style and Braxton's penchant for witty self-deprecation, a thoroughly approachable and at times even laugh-out-loud funny invitation into the aesthetic world of a man whose work can be as exhilarating as it is rigorous." -- Rolling Stone

This book provides second language teachers with a functional description of English grammar, in which grammar is viewed not as a set of rules but as a communicative resource. It explores ways in which English grammar enables speakers and writers to represent their experience of the world, to interact with one another, and to create coherent messages. Each chapter includes: -a focus on areas of difficulty for second language learners -numerous authentic examples -tasks which allow the reader to apply the concepts introduced -teaching discussion questions. A final chapter discusses issues in the learning and teaching of grammar and reviews methodological options for teaching grammar in the second or foreign language classroom. Functional English Grammar assumes no previous study of linguistics or English grammar. It is suitable for self-study or as a textbook in teacher education programs.

In Blutopia Graham Lock studies the music and thought of three pioneering twentieth-century musicians: Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton. Providing an alternative to previous analyses of their work, Lock shows how these distinctive artists were each influenced by a common musical and spiritual heritage and participated in self-conscious efforts to create a utopian vision of the future. A century after Ellington’s birth, Lock reassesses his use of music as a form of black history and compares the different approaches of Ra, a band leader who focused on the future and cosmology, and Braxton, a contemporary composer whose work creates its own elaborate mythology. Arguing that the majority of writing on black music and musicians has-even if inadvertently-incorporated racial stereotypes, he explains how each artist reacted to criticism and sought to break free of categorical confines. Drawing on social history, musicology, biography, cultural theory, and, most of all, statements by the musicians themselves, Lock writes of their influential work. Blutopia will be a welcome contribution to the literature on twentieth-century African American music and creativity. It will interest students of jazz, American music, African American studies, American culture, and cultural studies.

In Blutopia Graham Lock studies the music and thought of three pioneering twentieth-century musicians: Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton. Providing an alternative to previous analyses of their work, Lock shows how these distinctive artists were each influenced by a common musical and spiritual heritage and participated in self-conscious efforts to create a utopian vision of the future. A century after Ellington’s birth, Lock reassesses his use of music as a form of black history and compares the different approaches of Ra, a band leader who focused on the future and cosmology, and Braxton, a contemporary composer whose work creates its own elaborate mythology. Arguing that the majority of writing on black music and musicians has-even if inadvertently-incorporated racial stereotypes, he explains how each artist reacted to criticism and sought to break free of categorical confines. Drawing on social history, musicology, biography, cultural theory, and, most of all, statements by the musicians themselves, Lock writes of their influential work. Blutopia will be a welcome contribution to the literature on twentieth-century African American music and creativity. It will interest students of jazz, American music, African American studies, American culture, and cultural studies.