Deborah Mawer is Research Professor of Music at Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University. Her books include The Ballets of Maurice Ravel: Creation and Interpretation (2006), Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the 1920s (1997), Ravel Studies (Cambridge, 2010) and The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (Cambridge, 2000). Her articles and reviews, also encompassing jazz and dance, have appeared in a variety of books and journals, including the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Twentieth-Century Music, Music and Letters, Opera Quarterly, Music Theory Online and Music Analysis. In 2008 she was awarded a prestigious National Teaching Fellowship.
'This is the book for which jazz scholarship has long been waiting: at last, the hugely significant interactions between jazz and modern concert music have been unravelled with the insight, technical understanding and contextual awareness they deserve. Professor Mawer delves deeply into this two-way process in a series of fascinating case studies which celebrate some of the most exciting and far-reaching musical cross-fertilizations of the twentieth century.' Mervyn Cooke, Professor of Music, University of Nottingham 'At once an important survey of French music and jazz history, Mawer's book also brilliantly draws attention to the compelling cross-references and interactions between these worlds. The theoretical sophistication of the academy seamlessly merges with the dynamism of a jazz club, and the resulting mix has the intellectual and musical power of both.' Michael Beckerman, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Music, New York University