by David Kulma
A golden age in American popular music began about a century ago. Lasting four decades and pervading musical theater, sound recordings, film, radio, and jazz stylings, it left a body of music that has never gone out of circulation and is regularly trumpeted as one of America’s best collective creations. We now call it “The Great American Songbook.”
Last week, as part of the seventh annual Cleveland Trombone Seminar, a concert by Mark Lancaster Lusk took listeners into the heart of the brass player’s world: a region dominated by vocal music, modernist explorations, and jazz.