University Calendar

_{The Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America at Montclair State University and One Day University Present: Italian America in the World of Jazz}

Mark Rotella, director of the Coccia Institute at Montclair State University, leads a discussion with Anna Celenza, professor of music at Georgetown University, and John Gennari, professor of English at the University of Vermont, on the impact and influence Italian Americans have had on jazz from its origins to the present day.

Their discussion will hit all the notes—the birth of jazz in New Orleans with Louis Prima and Louis Armstrong in the French Quarter and Little Palermo; New York City’s Swing Street and the Famous Door; the rise of jazz in Fascist Italy; and the influential postwar Italian American musicians and singers, such as Chick Corea, Scott LaFaro, Jimmy Giuffre, Jackie Paris, and Lennie Tristano.

Mark Rotella / The Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America at Montclair State University

Mark Rotella is the Director of the Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America at Montclair State University, where he also teaches creative writing. He is the author of Amore: The Story of Italian American Song, and Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria. He has written for various publications, including The New York Times, New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Saveur Magazine, La Voce di New York,  and NPR.org. He has appeared on National Public Radio outlets across the U.S. (including All Things Considered and the Leonard Lopate Show), CBS’s The Insider, Entertainment Tonight, and ABC News.

Anna Celenza / Georgetown University

Anna Celenza is the Thomas E. Caestecker Professor of Music at Georgetown University. She is the author of several books, including Jazz Italian Style: From Its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra, and her most recent book, Music that Changed America.  In addition to her scholarly work, she has served as a writer/commentator for NPR’s Performance Today and published eight award-winning children’s books, including Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite. She has been featured on nationally syndicated radio and TV programs, including the BBC’s “Music Matters” and C-Span’s “Book TV.”

John Gennari / University of Vermont

John Gennari is Chair of English and Professor of English and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Flavor and Soul: Italian America at Its African American Edge (2017) and Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (2006), which received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Prize for Excellence in Music Criticism and the John G. Cawelti Award for the Best Book in American Culture Studies. He edited a special issue of Italian American Review (Winter 2019) called “Listening to Italian America,” and his essay “Groovin’: A Condensed History of Italian Americans in Popular Music and Jazz” appears in The Routledge History of Italian Americans (2018).