A finalist for the 2017 George Freedley Memorial Award "A compelling, absolutely unputdownable story . . . And, in case you're wondering, yes, the book is funny. In places, very funny. A remarkable story, magnificently told." -- Booklist In this richly reported, scene-driven narrative, Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv from its unlikely beginnings in McCarthy-era Chicago. We witness the chance meeting between Mike Nichols and Elaine May, hang out at the after-hours bar where Dan Aykroyd hosted friends like John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner, and go behind the scenes of cultural landmarks from The Graduate to The Colbert Report . Along the way, we befriend pioneers such as Harold Ramis, Chevy Chase, Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Alan Arkin, Tina Fey, Judd Apatow, and many others. Wasson shows why improv deserves to be considered the great American art form of the last half century. " One of the most important stories in American popular culture . . . Wasson may be the first author to explain [improv's] entire history . . . For that reason alone, it's a valuable book . " -- New York Times Book Review "A compelling history . . . It holds the element of surprise--true to the spirit of its subject." -- Entertainment Weekly

A colorful mixture of traditional English folk songs and ballads, as well as the history of many of the songs. Many English folk songs are quite familiar in America. Hundreds of them came along with the earliest settlers in the 17th century; others with the Redocoats in the 18th century; still others with the sailors and fisherman of the 19th century; and finally the doughboys and G.I.'s of two world wars have brought over the 20th century's contribution. The book includes melody line, lyrics, historical information, andguitar chords.

Paul Frees, known as the Man of a Thousand Voices, was more than an actor providing the unforgettable voices of such amusing, animated cartoon characters as Boris Badenov on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and The Pillsbury Doughboy, the Ghost Host in Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, and narrator of classic films, such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Shaggy Dog (1959). He was also an accomplished artist. Author, publisher, and history detective Ben Ohmart recently discovered a creative cache of Frees' scripts, lyrics, songs, paintings, and furniture designs that were unearthed only recently and never before seen by the public. Includes a full-length screenplay, The Demon from Dimension X, and unused material once written for satirical musician Spike Jones.

Istvan Anhalt, himself a composer of many vocal works, has written an interdisciplinary study of the innovative vocal and choral music that has emerged in Europe and North America since the Second World War. This music has amazed, confused, sometimes shocked, and often deeply moved its listeners, and the author probes its very roots. Anhalt sketches briefly the antecedents of this revolutionary music and then illustrates the subject by looking closely at works by three of the greatest composers of modern vocal and choral music: Luciano Berio’s Sequenza III for female solo voice, Gyӧrgy Ligeti's Nouvelles Aventures for three solo voices and small instrumental ensemble, and Witold Lutoslawski’s Trois Poèmes d’Henri Michaux for large chorus and orchestra. The author next seeks to formulate a conceptual framework to explain post-war vocal composition. He discusses relationships between poetry and music, speaking and singing, theatre and music, and composers and performers. He identifies and examines recurring themes in his corpus, including hallowed and cursed names, repetition as a mythical and/or mystical technique, the arcane, magical elements in music and language, and music as spectacle or celebration and as a search for the past. Anhalt also considers the structural elements and compositional procedures used in creating this type of music. The complex associations with other creative activities that typify modern vocal composition help to make it, as Anhalt shows clearly, an extraordinary rich mosaic of alternative voices.