Homeward Bound: An Interview with David McCullough

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Homeward Bound: An Interview with David McCullough David McCullough is a familiar name – and face. Known to millions as the author of bestselling books, including The Great Bridge, The Path Between the Seas, Truman, Mornings on Horseback, and Brave Companions, and as host of the popular PBS television series “Smithsonian World” and “The American Experience,” he is noted for his remarkable gift of writing richly...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Moore Is More As early as 1915, acclaimed American poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972) had discovered the artists and writers who were shaping what was coming to be known as the “new art.” Comments contained in her notebooks indicate her early grasp of the significance of the New York Armory Show of 1913, a benchmark in the American Modernist movement. In several lengthy letters to her...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf African Americans in Pennsylvania: Shifting Historical Perspectives by Joe William Trotter Jr. and Eric Ledell Smith, editors The Penn State University Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1997 (519 pages; cloth, $45.00, paper, $19.95) Dedicated to “the African American people of Pennsylvania” and intended to honor “the historians who have diligently...
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Fred Waring (1900-1984)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Fred Waring (1900-1984) In her 1997 book, Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, Virginia Waring declared her late husband “The Man Who Taught America How to Sing.” In his foreword to the book, Robert Shaw (1916-1999), world-famous choral conductor known for his classical and secular repertoire, wrote, “It is certain to me that tours of the Bach B Minor Mass and the Mozart Requiem would not have been...
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William Strayhorn

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on William Strayhorn Although jazz composer and arranger William “Billy” Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1915, his family moved to the Homewood section of Pittsburgh when he was five years old. His parents, Lillian and James Strayhorn, were bright and ambitious, but were never able to break out of their modest means. Young Strayhorn played his grandmother’s piano from the moment he was able...
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