Stravinsky in the Americas

Stravinsky in the Americas explores the pre-Craft period of Igor Stravinskys life, from when he first landed on American shores in 1925 to the end of World War II in 1945. Through a rich archival trove of ephemera, correspondence, photographs, and other documents, eminent musicologist H. Colin Slim examines the twenty-year period that began with Stravinsky as a radical European art-music composer and ended with him as a popular figure in American culture. This collection traces Stravinskys rise to famecatapulted in large part by his collaborations with Hollywood and Disney and marked by his extra-marital affairs, his grappling with feelings of anti-Semitism, and his encounters with contemporary musicians as the music industry was emerging and taking shape in midcentury America. Slims lively narrative records the composers larger-than-life persona through a close look at his transatlantic tours and domestic excursions, where Stravinskys personal and professional life collided in often-dramatic ways.