Fall 2000 Volume XXX, No. 1

Life with Fatha by Jeff Taylor Seven Steps to Piano Heaven: The Artistry of Sir Roland Hanna by Mark Tucker Visualizing Modernity and Tradition in Copland's America by Gail Levin Mark Tucker by H. Wiley Hitchcock Local Music/Global Connections Conference by Ray Allen ISAM Matters Reviews Country and Gospel Notes by Charles Wolfe Rediscovering the Sylviad by Douglas A. Lee Seeger Scholarship by Marc E. Johnson Zygotones by George Boziwick ISAM Home

ISAM Matters by Ellie M. Hisama With great sorrow, we note the death of Mark Tucker. Mark’s first contribution to the Newsletter appeared nearly two decades ago, and his prose has graced these pages ever since. We are proud that his tribute to Sir Roland Hanna appears in this issue, and we will be publishing a selection of his columns and articles from the Newsletter as a special ISAM publication. In honor of Mark’s memory, Carol J. Oja and the Tucker family request that contributions be made to The Mark Tucker Memorial Fund, The Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, 600 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605-1996. Our thoughts and love are with Carol, Zoe, and Wynn. With the generous support of the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, ISAM continues the second year of our colloquium series, American Music at the Millennium: New Perspectives on Race/Ethnicity/Culture. This fall, we have enjoyed lectures by our own Ray Allen, who delivered a paper on J’Ouvert in Brooklyn Carnival, and by Sherrie Tucker (Hobart and William Smith Colleges), who shared her research on the Prairie View Co-eds, a band of black college women in Texas. Our guests in spring 2001 will be Robin D. G. Kelley (New York University), who will treat us to an excerpt from his book-in-progress, Misterioso: In Search of Thelonious Monk, and Juan Flores (Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center), who will speak on Puerto Rican vernacular musics in New York City. Professor Flores’s lecture will inaugurate the three-day conference Local Music/Global Connections: New York City at the Millennium to be held in March 2001 at Brooklyn College, the CUNY Graduate Center, and New York University. Please see the announcement on p. 9 for further details. In conjunction with the festival Views from the Bridge: A Celebration of the Arts in Brooklyn (see p. 7), to be held at Brooklyn College in spring 2001, the Institute will sponsor a lecture by Gail Levin (Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center) on Aaron Copland and the visual arts on 8 May 2001, at 4:30 p.m. We are pleased to be publishing Professor Levin’s article on Copland in this issue of the Newsletter. Lastly, to celebrate the centennial of Ruth Crawford Seeger’s birth, the Institute will be hosting a conference on the life and music of this remarkable woman on 26-27 October 2001 at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Ruth Crawford Seeger: Modernity, Tradition, and the Making of American Music will focus on this innovative American composer and key figure in the American folk music revival of the 1930s and 1940s. An interdisciplinary gathering of composers, performers, musicologists, theorists, ethnomusicologists, folklorists, cultural historians, and music educators will explore Crawford Seeger's extraordinary contributions to the seemingly disparate spheres of modernist composition and traditional folk music. Stay tuned for details in this column. For additional information about these events, please visit our website or contact us at (718) 951-5655. We look forward to seeing you at Brooklyn College.