Description: Brings to light many once famous but now overlooked figures of Black musical theater history from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Brief description: Thomas L. Riis is Professor Emeritus of musicology at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he served as Director of the American Music Research Center from 1992-2018. His book, Just Before Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890 to 1915, won an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. He is also the author of the book Frank Loesser. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio.
Review Quotes:
"Riis's collection is a job well done and easy for professionals and laypeople to follow in no small part due to his mastery of form as a musical theater studies scholar. The greatest strengths are the range of topics from Black musicians, Black performers, and Blackness as sound to notable works and touring at home and abroad." Eric M. Glover, author of African American Perspectives in Musical Theater
"This is a valuable collection of essays, focusing on major figures in African American music who have not become household names. As a founding figure in the historiography of Black musical theater, Riis's work deserves the spotlight that a focused volume will provide." - Carol J. Oja, author of Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War