Panel discussion on writer Albert Murray
Date: Time: Location: Street: City/Town: Description
Jazz at Lincoln Center is hosting a symposium on Albert Murray and the recently published book, Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation. This is the first book of scholarly and personal essays on the work of a writer instrumental in the founding of Jazz at Lincoln Center.The panel discussion, which is free and open to the public, will be held Thursday, June 17, 2010, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m, in The Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Studio at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. The panel includes Barbara A. Baker, Auburn University; Paul Devlin, SUNY Stony Brook; Eugene Holley, Jr., jazz writer, Roberta S. Maguire, University of Wisconsin; Sidney Offit, New School for Social Research; Greg Thomas, jazz educator, print and broadcast journalist, and host of 20 episodes of Jazz It Up!; Lauren Walsh, New York University; and more.
Copies of the book, edited by Barbara A. Baker and with a preface by Anne-Katrin Gramberg, will be available for purchase at the event from Strand Book Store.
This collection consists of essays on various aspects of Murray’s work, written by prominent scholars of African American literature, jazz, and Albert Murray, reminiscences from Murray’s friends and associates, and interviews with Murray himself. It illustrates Murray’s place as a central figure in African American arts and letters and as an American cultural pioneer.
Born in Nokomis, Alabama in 1916, and raised in Mobile, Albert Murray graduated from Tuskegee Institute (now University) in 1939. He later taught there and at many other colleges. He retired as a Major from the U.S. Air Force in 1962 and moved to New York City, where he resides with his wife Mozelle. He is the author of many critically acclaimed books, including the The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy and the Fakelore of Black Pathology (essay collection, 1970), South to a Very Old Place (memoir, 1971), The Hero and the Blues (comparative critical essay, 1973), Train Whistle Guitar (highly acclaimed novel, 1974), Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie as told to Albert Murray (1986), and Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Albert Murray and Ralph Ellison (2000), among others. Murray is also the author of the hugely influential Stomping the Blues (1976), a history and aesthetics of jazz. Murray has served on the board of Jazz @ Lincoln Center for many years.
