AMERICAN MASTERS is an ongoing series of award-winning primetime specials examining the lives, works, and creative processes of our most outstanding cultural artists. Created in 1984 by Susan Lacy and produced by Thirteen/WNET for national public television, the series is both a celebration and an exploration of creativity in America. Consisting of more than 250 hours of programming to date, AMERICAN MASTERS is a growing film library documenting the role important individuals, groups, and movements have played in the formation of our cultural identity.
American Masters Previous Broadcasts
- <<Fri, Jan 1, 2010
- [displaying: Month of Feb 2010]
Frank Gehry is a rare architect, garnering both critical acclaim and popular recognition. His designs dramatically blur the line between art and architecture, creating dynamic structures and unpredictable interiors. Directed by Sidney Pollack, the program captures the shy, elusive and creative architect and illuminates Gehry's innovative process -- including expansive depictions of the Guggenheim Museum and the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington.
To celebrate his 92nd birthday, the program looks back at the precocious little boy from Waukesha, Wisconsin, who punched new chords into his mother's piano roll, turned his bedsprings into a radio antenna and rigged a microphone out of telephone parts to get a bigger sound from his Sears & Roebuck acoustic guitar. The legendary Les Paul -- father of the solid-body electric guitar, inventor of overdubbing and multi-track recording, king of the '50s pop charts and rock 'n' roll pioneer -- is still irascible, still egotistical, still indefatigable and still performing every Monday night at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City.
Ahmet Ertegun, a young Turk with an immigrant's passion for the African-American music he heard in the rigidly segregated Washington, DC, of the 1940s, soon recognized that "all popular music stems from Black music, be it jazz or rock n' roll or rap." He exported these endemic sounds to England, where they merged with the European sensibility, and he imported that fusion back across the ocean. It was a revolutionary new genre, single-handedly influencing the future direction of contemporary music. The program profiles the man who discovered Ray Charles, introduced Eric Clapton to Aretha Franklin and fell asleep on Mick Jagger.
Repeated on:Tue, Feb 9, 2010 -- 3:00 AM on KQED Life
- <<Fri, Jan 1, 2010
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