George Russell: The Story of an American Composer is the first biography of one of the greatest figures in jazz, written with Russell's full cooperation. Extensively researched with interviews from friends, family members, musicians, associates, and commentators on jazz, the book contains valuable insights that reveal many previously unknown facts about Russell's life.

Stratusphunk - George Russell was a unique figure in jazz. He was a theoretician, a composer of note, a working musician, and an educator. He began his life's work developing the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization in the mid-forties. One of a rare breed of thinker-musicians, through his ideas and music, Russell had a remarkable influence on the development of jazz after 1950. From his early composition with Dizzy Gillespie of "Cubano-Be, Cubano-Bop," through the changes wrought by modal jazz as a consequence of his ideas, to his impact on the Scandinavian and European scenes, his achievements are among the most outstanding in the music. His life story weaves its way through contemporary jazz intersecting with the lives of many of its most colourful characters. Charlie "Bird" Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, Gil Evans, Charlie Mingus, and Carla Bley were not just Russell's contemporaries. They were his peers, his colleagues and his friends. He touched their lives and music and, in turn, was encouraged by them. Originally published in 2010 under the title George Russell: The Story of an American Composer, Duncan Heining's biography of George Russell appears in a newly revised paperback edition for the first time.

In The Avatars, AE presents his own picture of what might happen if the socialistic State assumed control. So efficient has it become, that no one is homeless or insecure; everything is taken care of by the State. Yet, there is something in man that rebels against it. "The spirit of man has lost itself in many illusions, and last of all it may lose itself in the most pitiful of any, the illusion of economic security and bodily comfort. These now fail to satisfy it, and there is nothing for it but spiritual adventures. Poet, artist, visionary, all are there. This work written in old age, when his journalistic activities had been abandoned and he had leisure to give to it, contains something so quintessential of his nature that to pick it up is to find oneself for a little space once more in his company.

A selection of 150 years worth of international photojournalism.

Public Radio personality Tom Schnabel spotlights giants of the global genre like the late Sufi singer Nusrat Feteh Ali Kahn and this year's Grammy winner Milton Nascimiento, making "Rhythm Planet" both an antidote to the latest flavor of pop and an affirmation of music's power. 125 illustrations, 25 in color.