Now in paperback, Blue in Green—the latest work from the veteran novelist called one hell of a writer” by James Baldwin—narrates one evening in August 1959, when, weeks after the release of his landmark album Kind of Blue, Miles Davis was assaulted by a New York City cop outside Birdland. In the aftermath, we enter the strained relationship between Davis and his future wife, Frances Taylor. Frances, who is increasingly subject to Davis’ temper—fueled by his professional envy and substance abuse—reckons with her strict upbringing and, through a fateful meeting with Lena Horne, the conflicting demands of motherhood and artistic . . . .go to book page >>

Noted mathematician and composer Spencer Gerhardt presents Ticking Stripe, a groundbreaking collection of essays linking notions of continuity and construction across the boundaries of math, art, music and philosophy. Gerhardt offers new, deeply informed analysis of the 1960s New York avant-garde, viewed through the lens of trailblazing artists such as La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Catherine Christer Hennix, Henry Flynt and Tony Conrad. Ticking Stripe pairs the spirit of L.E.J. Brouwer—a mathematician who sought to reconstruct the continuum in his own philosophical terms called intuitionism—with the ambitions of pioneering minimalists who combined continued constructions, idealized processes of introspection and conceptual . . . .go to book page >>

In this memoir, Harlem-born trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah recounts decades of national and international touring with the Sun Ra Arkestra and charts the rise of the New York loft jazz scene, offering a fascinating portrait of advanced music in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan from the 1970s through the 1990s, including thrilling stories about the politically important Bed-Stuy venue The East and the author's tutelage under composer and long-time Archie Shepp collaborator Cal Massey. Along the way, Abdullah covers his spiritual development as a Buddhist, battles with addiction, tribulations as a father, lessons from Sun Ra and working life as an educator . . . .go to book page >>

Curtis Cuffie (1955–2002) was an artist from Harstville, South Carolina, who found local notoriety in the 1990s for the thrilling and surprising way he adorned the streets of New York’s East Village. His on-the-spot sculptures were woven into fences, hung from walls and sprawled along the Bowery and Cooper Square.
Making use of whatever he could find to fashion works that were imaginative and real, Cuffie took the street for all it could provide: materials, an audience, a rhythm and a sense of the strange unexpectedness of public life. He was unhoused for stretches of his life, and his sculptures were . . . .go to book page >>