New Books In Music

In Vince Guaraldi at the Piano (McFarland Press, 2012),Derrick Bang chronicles San Francisco jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi’s sojourns into the world of jazz from the late 1940s to his untimely death in 1976. Guaraldi, known to most world-wide as the composer and pianist behind the Peanuts’ animated television specials featuring Charlie Brown and Snoopy, also played in Woody Herman’s “Third Herd” big band; composed and recorded a revolutionary Jazz Mass which he performed live in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral in 1965; participated in some magical and memorable live and recorded collaborations with Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete; and was a fixture in the bossa nova Latin jazz San Francisco club scene in the 1950s and 1960s. His “Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus,” based on the soundtrack to the Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film in 1960, introduced countless people to jazz and the sensuous sounds of bossa nova. His single on the same album, “Cast Your