Charles K. Wolfe Music

When Gilya Gerda Schmidt met him in 1986, Cantor Heiser had spent forty-six of his eighty-one years as a US citizen and was well-acquainted with mourning. Heiser had assumed the cantorate at Congregation B'nai Israel in the East End of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1942. A master of the cantor's art, he was renowned for his style, elegant choir and service arrangements, and rich, dolesome voice, which seemed to pass effortlessly into hearers' hearts. But this book is more than a memorial to Heiser. Schmidt melds decades of archival research, conservation efforts, family interviews, and trips to Jerusalem and Berlin into a critical reconstruction of the life and vision of Hazzan Mordecai Gustav Heiser in the multiple contexts that shaped him. Coming of age in Berlin in the afterglow of the Second German Empire meant that young Gustav had tasted European Jewish culture in a rare state of refinement and modernity. But by January 30, 1940, when he reached New York with his wife, Elly, and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Judith, Cantor Heiser had lost nearly all of his living family relations to the extermination programs of the German Reich, after narrowly surviving a brief incarceration at Sachsenhausen. While Cantor Heiser's art was steeped in nineteenth-century tradition, Schmidt contends that Heiser's music was a powerful affirmation of Jewish life in the twentieth century. In a final chapter, Schmidt describes his influence on the American cantorate and American culture and society.

Canada's Prince Edward Island is home to one of the oldest and most vibrant fiddling traditions in North America. First established by Scottish immigrants in the late eighteenth century, it incorporated the influence of a later wave of Irish immigrants as well as the unique rhythmic sensibilities of the Acadian French, the Island's first European inhabitants. In Couldn't Have a Wedding without the Fiddler, renowned musician and folklorist Ken Perlman combines oral history, ethnography, and musical insight to present a captivating portrait of Prince Edward Island fiddling and its longstanding importance to community life. Couldn't Have a Wedding without the Fiddler draws heavily on interviews conducted with 150 fiddlers and other "Islanders"-including singers, dancers, music instructors, community leaders, and event organizers-whose memories span decades. The book thus colorfully brings to life a time not so very long ago when virtually any occasion-a wedding, harvest, house warming, holiday, or the need to raise money for local institutions such as schools and churchs-was sufficient excuse to hold a dance, with the fiddle player at the center of the celebration. Perlman explores how fiddling skills and traditions were learned and passed down through the generations and how individual fiddlers honed their distinctive playing styles. He also examines the Island's history and material culture, fiddlers' values and attitudes, the role of radio and recordings, the fiddlers' repertoire, fiddling contests, and the ebb and flow of the fiddling tradition, including efforts over the last few decades to keep the music alive in the face of modernization and the passing of "old-timers." Rounding out the book is a rich array of photographs, musical examples, dance diagrams, and a discography. The inaugural volume in the Charles K. Wolfe American Music Series, Couldn't Have a Wedding without the Fiddler is, in the words of series editor Ted Olson, "clearly among the more significant studies of a local North American music tradition to be published in recent years." A highly regarded banjoist, guitarist, teacher, and music collector, Ken Perlman previously published a collection of over 400 tunes called The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island: Celtic & Acadian Tunes in Living Tradition; he also produced a 2-CD set of field recordings for Rounder Records called The Prince Edward Island Style of Fiddling.. He has written several music instruction manuals now regarded as classics in their field, notably Clawhammer Style Banjo, Melodic Clawhammer Banjo, and Fingerstyle Guitar.

"In Cool Wooden Box, Rand Smith has cleverly woven person, social, and musical histories into a compelling narrative. In doing so, Smith has illustrated just how, well, cool the steel string acoustic guitar, its makers, and its players are." -John Thomas, author of Kalamazoo Gals: A Story of Extraordinary Women and Gibson's "Banner" Guitars of WWII, and field editor for The Fretboard Journal Beginning with a comparison of the American acoustic guitar world in the early 1960s with that of today, then describing iconic performances at storied venues such as The Ark in Ann Arbor while meticulously researching the instrument's top makers, Smith assembles a passion-filled and eye-opening history of that "cool wooden box" from the folk era through the pandemic. The author focuses on both the playing and making of the acoustic guitar, concluding that the instrument has been transformed in both aspects during the last sixty years. On the playing side, Smith examines the influences on, and the impact of, such guitarists as David Bromberg, Elizabeth Cotten, Paul Geremia, and Norman Blake. On the making side, the author takes the reader into the tradition-minded yet dynamic world of lutherie. He traces how the oldest, most revered companies whose reputations are based on legendary breakthroughs in lutherie, Gibson and Martin, have adapted as the new lutherie movement of innovative small-scale producers, exemplified by interviewees such as Michael Gurian, Bill Collings, Richard Hoover, and Dana Bourgeois, arose. Starting small and then growing exponentially, Taylor Guitars is a wholly different "player" in acoustic guitar building, and Smith compellingly tells its story. Finally, Cool Wooden Box considers the effects of globalization on the industry. Clocking thousands of miles and hours of interviews with guitar makers, suppliers, and sellers, W. Rand Smith has created not only a detailed history of the acoustic guitar, but also a lasting tribute to an instrument he so clearly reveres.