Renowned jazz and film critic Gary Giddins will guest lecture in Music and Humanities at his alma mater, Grinnell College, for two three-week short courses. The courses are titled “Criticism and Writing for Public Media” and “Visions of Jazz.” Grinnell is a small liberal arts school located in Iowa, about 50 miles east of Des Moines.
For nearly 30 years, Giddins, who graduated in 1970, wrote his jazz column “Weather Bird” for Village Voice, earning him wide recognition as one of the greatest music critics. Besides having been nominated for three Grammy awards, Giddins has won a Peabody Award for writing the PBS documentary John Hammond: From Bessie Smith to Bruce Springsteen, the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism for Visions of Jazz and two Gleason Awards for the latter and Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams. His writing arsenal includes a long list of books on musicians and other artists.
In Aug. 2006, Oxford Press published his most recent collection, Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books.
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