Queer Arrangements

"This is a groundbreaking contribution to jazz studies. Lisa Barg brilliantly unpacks how queerness plays out in the music of Billy Strayhorn, one of jazz's most talented composer-arrangers."—Walter van de Leur, author of Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn

"This book challenges the manner in which historical frameworks have been constructed and have promoted a personal and creative hierarchy in jazz's historiography. Most importantly it continues the much-needed work of detangling Billy Strayhorn's musical legacy from that of the Ellington organization by making the invisible aspects of his life visible, and the silent facets of his music heard."—Tammy L. Kernodle, author of Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams

"This remarkable, wide-ranging, musical, and intellectually stimulating book offers fascinating new insights on a composer-arranger whom his more famous collaborator Duke Ellington described as 'seldom seen, but always heard.' Lisa Barg's evocative, deeply researched study, invites us to see Billy Strayhorn—and the musical worlds in which he collaborated—more clearly than ever."—Jeffrey Magee, author of The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz

"Lisa Barg deftly and elegantly applies critical analysis of sexuality and queerness to reveal Billy Strayhorn as not only a brilliant pianist and composer, but also a vocal arranger committed to collaborative creativity, a vital, yet woefully understudied aspect of jazz music and culture."—Nichole Rustin-Paschal, author of The Kind of Man I Am: Jazzmasculinity and the World of Charles Mingus, Jr.