Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio" in Arts & Entertainment

While Galileo was suffering under house arrest at the hands of Pope Urban VIII, the 30 Years War was ruining Europe, and the Pilgrims were struggling to survive in the New World, work began on what would become one of the Seven Wonders of the World: the Taj Mahal. Built by the Moghul emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial to his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, its flawless symmetry and gleaming presence have for centuries dazzled all who have seen it.

Some of the twentieth century's most important artists and writers, from Jackson Pollock to Saul Steinberg, Fairfield Porter to Jean Stafford, lived and worked on the East End of Long Island. The home they made there would affect their creative work for years to come.

When you are passionately, purely in love, nothing else matters - not even life itself. Shakespeare’s consummate tragedy of young lovers swept into a catastrophic vortex of misunderstandings, secrets, and fate is set in 1840s Alta California, a vibrant and conflicted time in our history. Romeo and Juliet, the son and daughter of two landed families locked in an old feud, are irresistibly drawn to each other. Defying the hatred and distrust surrounding them, they dare to believe they can - and must - be together.

Opened in 1965 and located along the Potomac River in Washington, DC's Foggy Bottom neighborhood, the Watergate became one of the capital's chicest addresses, a hub for power brokers and the epicenter of a scandal that brought down a president. In The Watergate, writer and political consultant Joseph Rodota skillfully paints a vivid portrait of this historical landmark whose name has become an indelible part of the cultural zeitgeist.

In recent decades, Americans in Rome have revived an ancient Christian custom: the daily pilgrimage to dozens of Rome's most striking churches during Lent and Easter Week. Along this historical and spiritual pathway, pilgrims encounter hidden artistic wonders and treasured Christian commentaries while also confronting the great mysteries of the Christian faith through a program of biblical and early Christian readings. The itinerary of the Roman station church pilgrimage offers Christians an opportunity to reflect on their religion and ponder the quality of their discipleship.

Alexander the Great is a towering figure in ancient history because of his legendary conquests throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. He was born in 356 BC to the noble family of Macedon. As such, he was afforded with great luxuries growing up including having Aristotle as his private tutor. After his father was assassinated, he took over the throne and inherited a formidable army which he would put to tremendous use. Alexander was just in his early 20s when he embarked on an ambitious expansion of his territories.

He's been called "America's greatest living tailor" and "the most interesting man in the world." Now, for the first time, Holocaust survivor Martin Greenfield tells his whole, incredible life story. Taken from his Czechoslovakian home at age 15 and transported to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz with his family, Greenfield came face-to-face with "Angel of Death" Dr. Joseph Mengele and was divided forever from his parents, sisters, and baby brother. In haunting, powerful prose, Greenfield remembers his desperation and fear as a teenager alone in the death camp.

When The Flip Wilson Show debuted in 1970, Black faces were still rare on television, Black hosts nonexistent. So how did Clerow “Flip” Wilson go from Jersey City grade-school dropout to national celebrity, heralded on the cover of Time as “TV’s first black superstar”? Flip is a candid, entertaining biography of a consummate comedian who changed the face of American popular culture.

Television and TV viewing are not what they once were - and that's a good thing, according to award-winning author and critic Clive James. Since serving as television columnist for the London Observer from 1972 to 1982, James has witnessed a radical change in content, format, and programming, and in the very manner in which television is watched. Here he examines this unique cultural revolution, providing a brilliant, eminently entertaining analysis of many of the medium's most notable 21st-century accomplishments.

Jazz 101 is a fascinating entry into the world of jazz, for the beginner, novice, or jazz enthusiast. Szwed takes listeners on a tour of the varied and nonlinear history of jazz, exploring how it developed from an ethnic music to become America's most popular music and then part of the avant-garde in less than 50 years.

In clear and entertaining prose, Plotkin explores a thousand years of music, introduces listeners to more than 100 great works, and profiles in depth many significant composers, including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Dvoxak, and Mahler. He describes all the musical instruments in the orchestra, defines major musical terms, and makes music theory comprehensible for the uninitiated. There are also conversations with important musicians who offer fascinating insights about their art.

In his lectures (including an acclaimed TED talk) and now in this audiobook, Talgam shows why imposing your vision on your people is likely to backfire. Great conductors may know in advance how they want a piece to be played, but they make room for the creativity and passion of their musicians. They respect the gap between the baton and the instruments. They focus more on listening than on speaking.

Internationally celebrated for his writing and his music, Leonard Cohen is revered as one of the great writers, performers, and most consistently daring artists of our time. Now available on audio for the first time, the poems in Book of Mercy brim with praise, despair, anger, doubt, and trust. Speaking from the heart of the modern world, yet in tones that resonate with an older devotional tradition, these verses give voice to our deepest, most powerful intuitions. 

When Adam Parfrey tracked down Walter Keane - the credited artist of the weepy waifs - for a San Diego Reader cover story in 1992, he discovered some shocking facts. Decades of lawsuits and countersuits revealed the reality that Keane was more of a conman than an artist and that he forced his wife, Margaret, to sign his name to her own paintings. As a result those weepy waifs may not have been as capricious an invention as they seemed.

For Marcia Davenport, the research and writing of Mozart was truly a labor of love, during which she retraced every journey he made, saw every dwelling (then extant) in which he had ever lived, every theatre where his works were first performed, and every library and museum where his manuscripts were then to be seen. In this eloquent work of historical reconstruction, Davenport lets her characters tell their own stories.

February, 1940. After a decade of worldwide depression, World War II had begun in Europe and Asia. With Germany on the march and Japan at war with China, the global crisis was in a crescendo. America's top songwriter, Irving Berlin, had captured the nation's mood a little more than a year before with his patriotic hymn "God Bless America."

To celebrate Radio 3's 50th anniversary, Man and Superman was directed by Sir Peter Hall, and preserved for all time in this lush audio dramatization. "A comedy and a philosophy", Man and Superman is based on the Don Juan theme, and using all the elements from Mozart's Don Giovanni, Shaw reordered them so that Don Juan becomes the quarry instead of the huntsman. Boasting an outstanding cast including Ralph Fiennes, Juliet Stevenson, Dame Judi Dench, John Wood, Nicholas Le Prevost, and Paul Merton.

Drawing on his own life and career and the rich lore of The Lion King, Alton Fitzgerald White, Broadway's longest-running "King", delivers his message of service - taking responsibility for and deriving happiness from commonplace achievements - as a philosophy that anyone can get through each day with satisfaction, pride, and a sense of accomplishment.

April of 1958 - the Iron Curtain was at its heaviest, and the outcome of the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition seemed preordained. Nonetheless, as star musicians from across the globe descended on Moscow, an unlikely favorite emerged: Van Cliburn, a polite, lanky Texan whose passionate virtuosity captured the Russian spirit. This is the story of what unfolded that spring - for Cliburn and the other competitors, jurors, party officials, and citizens of the world who were touched by the outcome.

Until now, Hollywood's political history has been dominated by a steady stream of films and memoirs decrying the nightmare of the Red Scare and how it victimized political innocents. But Ronald and Allis Radosh tell for the first time the “backstory” behind this myth. They show how the Soviet Comintern targeted the film capital in the late 1920s, taking us inside the cells and discussion groups that Communist Party members formed, the guilds and unions they tried to take over, and the studios they aimed to influence.