John Everett Millais, Jason Rosenfeld, Gift of Malcolm Warner

Call number: 759.2/M645/R813

John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was one of the most significant English painters of the nineteenth century. In this new study of the artist's life and work, author Rosenfeld demonstrates that the development of Millais's art was at the forefront of contemporary painting throughout his life and not just his earlier Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces. This beautiful book includes 200 illustrations from Millais's best-loved work, archival material and a few surprises. And for the first time, Millais's landscapes, which influenced Van Gogh, and his portraits, which influenced John Singer Sargent, are given due attention.

Living space: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and free jazz, from analog to digital, Michael E. Veal

Call number: 781.65/V394

A musical study of free jazz, specifically John Coltrane's controversial 'late period' and Miles Davis's long-neglected 'Lost Quintet,' bringing jazz into dialogue with experimental currents in analysis of architecture and photography. Living Space: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Free Jazz, from Analog to Digital fuses biography and style history in order to illuminate the music of two jazz icons, while drawing on the discourses of photography and digital architecture to fashion musical insights that may not be available through the traditional language of jazz analysis. The book follows the controversial trajectories of two jazz legends, emerging from the 1959 album Kind of Blue.

After Bach, Brad Mehldau, Gift of Dottie Bybee

Call number: J M47.8 af

The album comprises four preludes and one fugue from J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, as well as the Allemande from Partita for Keyboard No. 4 in D Major, interspersed with seven compositions or improvisations by Mehldau inspired by the complementary works of the Baroque master—including his Variations on Bach’s Goldberg Theme. Mehldau, speaking of the “universality” of Bach’s music, says in his liner note: “The more you try to engage with him, the more your own personality becomes visible, unavoidably. You are not playing Bach—Bach is playing you, in the sense that he lays you bare ... The greatest choice you make at all times is not out of an absence, but from what is there, in its totality. Specifically, it is the constant choice you make in how to negotiate between harmony and melody.” He continues, “This is why Bach is a model for me as a jazz musician. In my improvised solos, I want to make melodic phrases that carry harmonic implication, and create harmony that moves in a melodic fashion. This is a crucial component in the storytelling.”