Edward Berger (former Associate Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies) will present a program on his newly published book, Softly, With Feeling: Joe Wilder and the Breaking of Barriers in American Music, Thursday, April 24, from 3-5 p.m. in the Dana Room on the 4th floor of the John Cotton Dana Library, Rutgers University, Newark, N.J. The event is free and open to the public.
According to a press release, “In Softly, with Feeling, Edward Berger tells Wilder’s remarkable story from his youth in working-class Philadelphia and his apprenticeship in the big bands, to his experience as one of the first 1,000 black Marines during World War II, and his achievements in the worlds of jazz, classical, and popular music.”