As the daughter of George and Ira Gershwin's sister, Frances, and Leopold Godowsky Jr., son of the well-known pianist, composer and teacher, Nadia Natali grew up in a privileged environment. Stairway to paradise is the memoir of her personal journey to find her own true purpose in life, leaving New York and traveling to a wild and wonderful piece of land in the coastal mountains of Southern California. Here she and her husband Enrico Natali, a Zen practitioner and photographer, raised a family and experienced unimaginable adventures, from the tragedy of losing their son to abundant and varying opportunities for personal growth, far away from the lifestyle in which she was raised.

Stairway to Paradise reveals how American Jewish entrepreneurs, musicians, and performers influenced American popular music from the late nineteenth century till the mid-1960s. From blackface minstrelsy, ragtime, blues, jazz, and Broadway musicals, ending with folk and rock 'n' roll. The book follows the writers and artists' real and imaginative relationship with African-American culture's charisma. Stairway to Paradise discusses the artistic and occasionally ideological dialogue that these artists, writers, and entrepreneurs had with African-American artists and culture. Tracing Jewish immigration to the United States and the entry of Jews into the entertainment and cultural industry, the book allocates extensive space to the charged connection between music and politics as reflected in the Jewish-Black Alliance - both in the struggle for social justice and in the music field. It reveals Jewish success in the music industry and the unique and sometimes problematic relationships that characterized this process, as their dominance in this field became a source of blame for exploiting African-American artistic and human capital. Alongside this, the book shows how black-Jewish cooperation, and its fragile alliance, played a role in the hegemonic conflicts involving American culture during the 20th century. Unintentionally, it influenced the process of decline of the influence of the WASP elite during the 1960s. Stairway to Paradise fuses American history and musicology with cultural studies theories. This inter-disciplinary approach regarding race, class, and ethnicity offers an alternative view of more traditional notions regarding understanding American music's evolution.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

Includes primary source material in the form of photographs, transcripts, etc.

Alex and Andrew are friends. And Barbara ... Barbara is a goddess. Here is the eternal triangle, the story of three people in an unhappy tangle of emotions, none able to articulate the precise quality of their longing and dissatisfaction. Are any of them truly interested in reaching the 'paradise' they claim to be seeking, or are they actually trying to avoid it? In St. John's hands, what is commonplace is transformed and transcendent. This is the work of an extraordinary writer.

Three characters caught up in a complicated and ultimately unsatisfying tangle of desires and emotional commitments struggle with loss and alienation as they seek to find meaning in their lives.