Launch of "Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation"

Jazz at Lincoln Center will host a panel discussion celebration on the publication of Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation on June 17, 7 to 9 p.m. The Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts will host a book talk celebration at the University Chapel on June 30, 4 p.m.

Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation, the first book of scholarly and personal essays on the work of a writer who was instrumental in founding Jazz at Lincoln Center, is edited by Dr. Barbara Baker, director of the College of Liberal Arts Women’s Leadership Institute, and features contributions by Dr. Anne-Katrin Gramberg, Dr. Caroline Gebhard, Dr. Bert Hitchcock, Henry Louis Gates, Wynton Marsalis and others.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center panel discussion, which is free and open to the public, will be held in The Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Studio at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. The panel includes Baker; Paul Devlin, SUNY Stony Brook; Roberta S. Maguire, University of Wisconsin; Sidney Offit, New School for Social Research; Greg Thomas, jazz educator, print and broadcast journalist, former host of Jazz It Up!; Lauren Walsh, New York University; and more.

The Auburn program will feature Baker, Hitchcock, Gebhard and other contributors and will be followed by a reception. The public is invited. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing at both events.

Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation is published jointly by the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities, College of Liberal Arts, Auburn University, and The University of Alabama Press.