Читать книгу “We Didn’t Start the Fire” - Группа авторов - Страница 10

First and foremost, we would like to thank Billy Joel, whose contributions to this volume are many. From his initial conversations with Josh in 2015 to his participation in the keynote interview of “‘It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me’: The Music and Lyrics of Billy Joel—A Public Musicology Conference” in 2016 to his continued dialogue with us as the book approached publication, we appreciate Joel’s support of this project and scholarly inquiry into his music in general. But beyond these exchanges, we’d like to extend our gratitude to Joel for providing such a rich body of work to sustain academic study. Thank you, also, to Keri Aylward and Claire Mercuri for their assistance.

We would also like to thank our families, whose unwavering support and encouragement serves as the foundation on which our work is built.

To the contributors to this volume, we say a hearty thank you for sharing your scholarship, both at the 2016 Billy Joel Conference and here, in these pages. It has been a pleasure reading your work and helping to shepherd it to publication. Eric Hung, Katherine Meizel, and Albin Zak served as members of the program committee for that conference, laying the foundation for the essays presented herein. Thanks also to series editors Scott Calhoun and Christopher Endrinal, as well as to Courtney Morales and the team at Lexington Books, for believing in this project and ultimately guiding it into print.

Our colleagues at our home institutions have provided important support and encouragement as we pursued this project. At Colorado College, we thank Iddo Aharony, Ofer Ben-Amots, Ann and Dan Brink, Stormy Burns, Aaron Cohick, Matthew Cherry, Stephanie Doktor, Claire Garcia, Susan and Michael Grace, Lisa Gregory, Jeff Hartmann, Stephen Hayward, Jessica Hunter-Larson, Mary Franse Kerr, Scott Krzych, Victoria Levine, Dylan Nelson, Kate Nelson, Keith Reed, Chris Schwing, Brenda Soto, Gina Spires, Jill Tiefenthaler, Alan Townsend, Naomi Trujillo, Amanda Udis-Kessler, Leslie Weddell, Sandi Wong, and Stephanie Wurtz. At Wayne State University, we thank Jon Anderson, Doug Bianchi, Jack Blaszkiewicz, Karl Braunschweig, Frances Brockington, Abby Butler, Vincent Chandler, Chris Collins, Rob Conway, Jerry Custer, Norah Duncan IV, Walter Edwards, Natasha Kelly Foreman, Loraleigh Keashly, Jonathan Lasch, Kypros Markou, Russ Miller, Mary Paquette-Abt, Joo Won Park, Jeremy Peters, Laura Roelofs, Matt Seeger, Micheal Shellabarger, Alex Sutton, John Vander Weg, Serena Vaquilar, and Mary Wischusen. Additionally, we must thank our undergraduate and graduate students, whose inquisitiveness and incisive questions helped to spur our thinking.

Our friends and colleagues in the broader field of music have also offered tremendous support. Thanks, in particular, to Katherine Boas, Jim Bosse, Claire and Jack Burson, Austin Chrzanowski, Richard Crawford, Charles Hiroshi Garrett, Jan Glick, Glenda Goodman, Ellen Harris, Robert Judd, Shannon Kennedy, Fiona Linn, Wendy Matthews, Drew Massey, Kevin Mocker, Matthew Mugmon, Thomas Riis, Robert and Wendy Ruth, Emery Stephens, and Anna Zayaruznaya.

Ultimately, however, we would like to thank you, who have picked up this book and, in the process, made the choice to engage with this important music with open-minded intellectual curiosity about how it came to be, how it is put together, and, importantly, what it means.