LITERATURE + LECTURES

The Center for Jewish Living and Learning at the Jewish Community Center of Houston presents Exploring Jewish Music: The Golden Age of American Musical Theater and the Legacy of Jewish Immigration. Lecture by Dr. Howard Pollack, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Music at the Moores School of Music, University of Houston. Sunday, November 21, at 7:00pm.

Jewish Americans, many of them children of Eastern European immigrants, played an unusually prominent role in the what many regard as the golden age of American opera and musical theater. This broad survey of musicals and operas from Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat (1927) to Bock and Harnick's Fiddler on the Roof (1964), including also works by Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin, Weill, Copland, Blitzstein and Bernstein considers ways in which themes of migration, departure, arrival, assimilation, and utopia inform this repertoire.

Howard Pollack (pictured) holds a Bachelor of Music degree in music history from the University of Michigan and a Master of Arts degree and Ph.D. in musicology from Cornell University. He has taught at the University of Houston since 1987.

Especially interested in the interaction of popular, jazz, and classical idioms in twentieth-century music, Pollack has published widely in the field of American music, including five books: Walter Piston (1982); Harvard Composers: Walter Piston and his Students, from Elliott Carter to Frederic Rzewski (1992); John Alden Carpenter: A Chicago Composer (1995); Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man (1999); and most recently, George Gershwin: His Life and Work (2006). He also co-edited German Literature and Music: An Aesthetic Fusion (1890-1989) (1992). Currently, he is writing a critical biography of Marc Blitzstein.

Described by the New York Times as "the definitive study of Aaron Copland's life and work, no doubt for a long time to come," Copland received the Irving Lowens Award from the Society for American Music and a Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP. George Gershwin, which received a Deems Taylor Award and an Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, has been called "a watershed event in scholarship on the composer" and "a monument to all that we presently know about Gershwin as both man and musician" (Journal of the Society for American Music) as well as "endlessly fascinating" (New York Times) and "a gripping read" (Charleston News and Courier), with "some of the best musical analysis you're likely to find anywhere" (Toronto Globe and Mail). Pollack's other awards include two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Research Grant from the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, a Newberry Library Fellowship, a Research Excellence Award from the University of Houston, and subvention grants from the Society for American Music and the American Musicological Society.

Pollack's articles and reviews have appeared in numerous journals and encyclopedias, and he has lectured at colleges and arts organizations in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, England, Germany, Mexico, and across the United States.

At the University of Houston, Pollack regularly teaches Music History III (1890-present) for the undergraduate music history survey, and the Doctoral Research Seminar, as well as electives in 20th-century music, keyboard literature, film music, and musical theater.

The series is underwritten by the Maurice Amado Foundation.

The Jewish Community Center has founded the Center for Jewish Learning and Living, a collaborative process that brings together the arts and culture programming of the Center, such as the Book and Arts Fair, the Jewish Film Festival, and the Jewish Music Festival, and the education initiatives of the Center, such as the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, and the Bunny and Leo Horvitz Scholar-in-Residence Program. In addition, this collaboration brings additional programs and staff to the Jewish initiatives of the JCC, with high hopes that more members of our community may be touched by meaningful Jewish experiences.