Vivian Perlis and Libby Van Cleve, Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington (Yale). This is the book that took first place over Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond in the Independent Publishers awards competition. But, no hard feelings, only gratitude for a hefty volume that presents oral history in a readable–and listenable–form. The book includes two CDs with, in many cases, the voices of the composers. Aaron Copland: “Music needn’t be so high-falutin’ that it becomes abstract and just pure notes, you know.” Duke Ellington: “Everything is so highly personalized that you just can’t find a category big enough. And ‘jazz’ certainly isn’t big enough.” If you wish to know more about Eubie Blake, Mel Powell, Nadia Boulanger, Edgard Varèse or Nicolas Slonimsky, among many others, this is a book for you.