Simon Morrison Popular Books

Simon Morrison Biography & Facts

Simon Morrison is a scholar and writer specializing in 20th-century music, particularly Russian, Soviet, and French music, with special interests in dance, cinema, aesthetics, and historically informed performance based on primary sources. He has conducted archival research in St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Paris, London, New York, Washington D.C., Copenhagen, and (most extensively) in Moscow. He has traveled to Tel Aviv, Beijing, Hong Kong, Montreal, Moscow, Copenhagen, and Bangkok to give invited lectures and graduate seminars and divides his time between Princeton and Los Angeles. Morrison is the author of Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks (California, 2022), Roxy Music's Avalon (Bloomsbury, 2021), Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (California, 2002, 2019), Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Tsars to Today (W.W. Norton, 2016), The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev (Houghton, 2013), and The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years (Oxford, 2009) as well as editor of Prokofiev and His World (Princeton, 2008) and, with Klara Moricz, Funeral Games: In Honor of Arthur Vincent Lourié (Oxford, 2014). His study of Tchaikovsky, titled Tchaikovsky's Empire, is forthcoming from Yale University Press, and he is at work on a history of Moscow (tentatively titled Moskva) for Random House. He maintains a profile as a public intellectual by continuing to write books and feature articles, giving interviews and lectures in his areas of expertise as well as assisting in ballet and theatre productions. Career Morrison received his B.Mus. from the University of Toronto (1987), a Master's in Musicology from McGill University (1993), and Ph.D. from Princeton University (1997), where he is Professor of Music. His distinctions include the Alfred Einstein Award of the American Musicological Society (1999), an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (2001), a Phi Beta Kappa Society Teacher Award (2006), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2011), and the Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities (2022). He is a leading authority on composer Sergey Prokofiev and has received unprecedented access to the composer's papers, housed in Moscow at RGALI. As a writer Morrison's most recent book, Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks was published in October 2022 by the University of California Press. Morrison's book Roxy Music's Avalon, about the eighth and final studio album by the English rock band Roxy Music, was published by Bloomsbury press in 2021 as part of its popular music series 33 1/3. Morrison's book Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Tsars to Today, was published by Liveright (W.W. Norton) in 2016, with additional translations and editions from Random House (Canada), Fourth Estate (UK), and Belfond (France). It was widely reviewed in major news outlets and shortlisted for the Book Prize of Pushkin House, London. His biography of Lina Prokofiev, the composer's first wife, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2013. Lina and Serge: The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev was featured on BBC Radio 4 (as "Book of the Week"), BBC World News (TV), and WYNC. Reviews appeared in The Guardian, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, The Daily Beast, and The American Spectator. Morrison is also author of The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years (Oxford University Press, 2009) as well as Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (University of California Press, 2002). As Scholar-in-Residence for the 2008 Bard Music Festival, he edited the essay collection Sergey Prokofiev and His World (Princeton University Press, 2008). Among his other publications are essays on Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloé, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Shostakovich's ballet The Bolt, numerous reviews and shorter articles, including pieces for the New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and London Review of Books. As a producer Morrison is actively engaged in the performing arts, most notably ballet, and has translated his archival findings into new productions. In 2005, he oversaw the recreation of the Prokofiev ballet Le Pas d'Acier at Princeton University and in 2007 co-produced a world premiere staging of Alexander Pushkin's drama Boris Godunov featuring Prokofiev's incidental music and Vsevolod Meyerhold's directorial concepts. In 2008, Morrison restored the scenario and score of the original (1935) version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet for the Mark Morris Dance Group. The project involved orchestrating act IV (featuring a happy ending) from Prokofiev's annotations and rearranging the order and adjusting the content of acts I-III. This version of the ballet was premiered on July 4, 2008, and began an international tour in September. Morrison also brought to light Prokofiev's score Music for athletes/Fizkul’turnaya muzyka (1939), which Morrison describes as "cheerful, sardonic music composed for a scary political cause: a Stalinist (totalitarian) display of the physical prowess of Soviet youth." In the spring of 2010, he staged Claude Debussy's final masterpiece, the ballet The Toy-Box (La boîte à joujoux), using a version of the score premiered in 1918 by the Moscow Chamber Theater that features a previously unknown "jazz overture." Also newly staged was the original version of John Alden Carpenter's jazz ballet, Krazy Kat (1921), based on the iconic comic strip. In February 2012, Morrison oversaw a world-premiere performance of Prokofiev's incidental music for Eugene Onegin, set to a playscript by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. A concert version was performed by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, and the play staged by Princeton faculty and students. Both performances were part of a conference Morrison co-organized at Princeton, "After the End of Music History," celebrating the career of musicologist Richard Taruskin. In 2017, Morrison collaborated with the Penguin Cafe Orchestra to present a revival of Within the Quota (1923), a ballet with music by Cole Porter. The production was featured on NPR, the BBC World News America, and in a news story by the AP. As a public speaker Morrison is an acclaimed public speaker equally in demand by academic and general audiences. Among his subjects of expertise are the history of ballet in France, Russia, and the United States; the music of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich; politics and culture in the Soviet Union, France, Russia, and the United States; Russian culture under Putin; cultural exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States; imperial culture under the Russian tsars; and current trends in Russian music and dance. He is sought after as a pre-concert lecturer, having been lauded at the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Opera in particular. He has spoken extensively on the music of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Debussy, Musorgsky, Beethoven, Poulenc, and many other beloved composers. Morrison is a favored guest.... Discover the Simon Morrison popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Simon Morrison books.