Presented with the Stanford Humanities Center Forty years have passed since the Beatles released The White Album, introducing "Blackbird," "Rocky Raccoon," "Sexy Sadie," "Helter Skelter" and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" into the cultural lexicon. Please join us for a conversation with three Stanford alums whose research explores the musical and cultural innovations that made the Beatles a powerful force for innovation in society and the arts.
DANIEL LEVITIN DANIEL LEVITIN
Daniel Levitin, holder of the Bell Chair in
the Psychology of Electronic Communication Laboratory for Music
Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill University, earned his
bachelor’s degree in cognitive science at Stanford, his doctorate in
psychology from the University of Oregon, and completed post-doctoral
training in neuroimaging and psychology at the Stanford University
School of Medicine and UC Berkeley. For a decade, he worked as a
session musician, commercial recording engineer, and record producer
for countless rock groups, including Santana and the Grateful Dead. He
has published extensively in refereed scientific journals and in audio
magazines and trade journals such as Grammy, Billboard, and Audio. He is the author of the bestselling book, This Is Your Brain On Music.
http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/levitin/
NICK BROMELL
Nick Bromell, a professor of English at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst earned his doctorate at Stanford
where he studied the literature, intellectual history, and popular
culture of the United States. In addition to essays and reviews he has
written for numerous scholarly and popular publications, he is the
author of By the Sweat of the Brow: Literature and Labor in Antebellum American Culture and Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the 1960s. He is currently writing a book on U.S. literature and democracy.
http://www.umass.edu/english/facProfiles/Bromell.htm
JONATHAN BERGER
Jonathan Berger, Associate Professor of
Music and Codirector of the Stanford Initiative on Creativity and the
Arts, has composed symphonic works, concerti, works for all varieties
of chamber ensemble, and electroacoustic music. In addition to
composition, he is an active researcher with over 60 publications in a
wide range of fields relating to music, science and technology. His
most recent CD, Miracles and Mud, was released last spring. He and Daniel Levitin are now working on an article on the Beatles and Joseph Haydn.