MCG Jazz at MLPL

Join our friends from Manchester Craftman's Guild Jazz as we welcome Guitarist and writer Colter Harper to perform and discuss his new book Crossroads of the World: Jazz, Nightlife, and Pittsburgh’s Hill District.

Ethnomusicologist and professor of music Colter Harper will discuss his new book Jazz in the Hill and explore Pittsburgh's rich jazz legacy. The presentation will include solo guitar performance, discussions of the photography of Charles "Teenie" Harris and the musicians who performed at the famous Crawford Grill No. 2 during jazz's golden age of the 1950s and 1960s.

Book Description:

From the 1920s through the 1960s, Pittsburgh’s Hill District was the heart of the city’s Black cultural life and home to a vibrant jazz scene. In Jazz in the Hill: Nightlife and Narratives of a Pittsburgh Neighborhood, Colter Harper looks at how jazz shaped the neighborhood and created a way of life. Beyond backdrops for remarkable careers, jazz clubs sparked the development of a self-determined African American community. In delving into the history of entrepreneurialism, placemaking, labor organizing, and critical listening in the Hill District, Harper forges connections to larger political contexts, processes of urban development, and civil rights struggles.

No registration required!