Anatomy of a song

Every great song has a fascinating backstory. In Anatomy of a Song, based on the ongoing Wall Street Journal column, writer and music historian Marc Myers brings to life five decades of music through oral histories of forty-five transformative songs woven from interviews with the artists who crea...

Fantasy, neoliberalism and precariousness

Contributing to debates within cultural studies, sociology and the political economy of communication about working lives in the cultural and creative industries, Vachet answers to-date unexplored questions around the psychosocial impact of precariousness and other problematic features of work in...

It's a london thing

This book tells the history of the London black music culture that emerged in post-colonial London at the end of the twentieth century; the people who made it, the racial and spatial politics of its development and change, and the part it played in founding London’s precious, embattled multiculture.

Mozart in the jungle

In the tradition of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and Gelsey Kirkland’s Dancing on My Grave, Mozart in the Jungle delves into the lives of the musicians and conductors who inhabit the insular world of classical music. In a book that inspired the Amazon Original series starring Gael Garc...

Music in edwardian london

Traversing London's musical culture, this book boldly illuminates the emergence of Edwardian London as a beacon of musical innovation.The dawning of a new century saw London emerge as a hub in a fast-developing global music industry, mirroring Britain's pivotal position between the continent, the...

Musicians on twitch

Musicians on Twitch examines the emergence of the ‘musician-streamer’, a new kind of cultural worker shaped by the conventions of live streaming. Drawing on interviews and longitudinal observation, it shows how Twitch is reshaping musical labour, monetising the bonds that form between musicians a...

We gotta get out of this place

What makes a great composer?

How education, institutions, emotion, and opportunity shape creativity in classical musicWhy do we still listen to Mozart’s music but not Salieri’s? Would Nadia Boulanger be better known as a composer than a teacher if she were a man? Why did so many composers move to Vienna, Paris, and London, d...