Best Refashioning Podcasts (2025)

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I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti’s Fight for Freedom 56:17

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1d ago56:17

56:17

“My name has become a horror to all those who want slavery,” declared Jean‑Jacques Dessalines as he announced the independence of Haiti, the most radical nation‑state during the Age of Revolution and the first country ever to permanently outlaw slavery. Enslaved for the first thirty years of his life, Dessalines (c. 1758–1806) joined the revolution…

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Susan M. Rigdon, "Oscar Lewis in Cuba: La Partida Final" (Berghahn Books, 2024) 1:07:48

5d ago1:07:48

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American anthropologist Oscar Lewis secured permission from Fidel Castro to undertake three years of field research on cultural and economic change in Cuba in the decade after the victory of Castro's M-26 Movement. Oscar Lewis in Cuba: La Partida Final (Berghahn Books, 2024) delves into Lewis' research goals, methods, the training and composition o…

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Aliyah Khan, "Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean" (Rutgers UP, 2020) 45:03

9d ago45:03

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Muslims have lived in the Caribbean for centuries. Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean (Rutgers University Press, 2020) examines the archive of autobiography, literature, music and public celebrations in Guyana and Trinidad, offering an analysis of the ways Islam became integral to the Caribbean, and the ways the Caribbean shaped Islam…

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Olga Touloumi, "Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior" (U Minnesota Press, 2024) 58:05

21d ago58:05

58:05

For almost seven years after World War II, a small group of architects took on an exciting task: to imagine the spaces of global governance for a new political organization called the United Nations (UN). To create the iconic headquarters of the UN in New York City, these architects experimented with room layouts, media technologies, and design in …

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Harald Bodenschatz et al., "Urban Planning in Nazi Germany: Attack, Triumph, Terror in the European Context, 1933–1945" (DOM, 2025) 56:00

25d ago56:00

56:00

Urban Planning in Nazi Germany: Attack, Triumph, Terror in the European Context, 1933–1945 (DOM, 2025) is edited by Uwe Altrock, Harald Bodenschatz, Victoria Grau, Jannik Noeske, Christiane Post, and Max Welch Guerra. The book includes contributions from Christian von Oppen, Piero Sassi, and Jannik Noeske. Two co-editors, Victoria Grau and Max Welc…

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Florence Price's choral works. An introduction. 20:01

18d ago20:01

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Florence Price’s abiding interest in the literary arts helps explain the extraordinarily large number of vocal compositions in her catalogue – well over one hundred – as well as the fact that she occasionally supplied texts of her own for these pieces. Conductor John Jeter discusses with Raymond Bisha his latest album of Price's music which compris…

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Kathleen Wilson, "Strolling Players of Empire: Theater and Performances of Power in the British Imperial Provinces, 1656–1833" (Cambridge UP, 2022) 55:38

19d ago55:38

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Why did Britons get up a play wherever they went? In Strolling Players of Empire: Theater and Performances of Power in the British Imperial Provinces, 1656–1833 (Cambridge UP, 2022), Dr. Kathleen Wilson reveals how the performance of English theater and a theatricalized way of viewing the world shaped the geopolitics and culture of empire in the lo…

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Bench Ansfield, "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City" (Norton, 2025) 48:18

1M ago48:18

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“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods…

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Disco's "Latin Tinge" 1:01:02

21d ago1:01:02

1:01:02

In the 1930s, musical Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton identified the influence of Latin American rhythms like the habanera in jazz, as a sonic “tinge” that fundamentally shaped his style as a stride pianist. In the Seventies, disco presented its own Latin tinge. The Latin American and Latino influence on 1970s New York disco extended far beyond the f…

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Assembled again. The Peterhouse Partbooks. 20:01

1M ago20:01

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Collected for use in the chapel of Cambridge University's Peterhouse college in the 1630s and hidden during the Civil War, the Peterhouse Partbooks represent one of the most important manuscript collections of sacred choral music from the period. In this podcast, Raymond Bisha presents performances of those works by the Peterhouse choir, affording …

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Edward Berenson, "Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:03:08

1M ago1:03:08

1:03:08

The rise and fall of William J. Levitt, the man who made the suburban house a mass commodity. Two material artifacts defined the middle-class American lifestyle in the mid-twentieth century: the automobile, which brought gas stations, highways, commercial strips, and sprawl; and the single-family suburban home, the repository of many families’ long…

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Manuel Barcia, "The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade" (Yale UP, 2020) 48:40

1M ago48:40

48:40

As we now know, epidemics and pandemics are not new phenomena. In her new book The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale University Press, 2020), Manuel Barcia offers a striking rendition of the diseases that swept through the illegal slave trade Atlantic World. In fact, Barcia argues that the h…

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Sweeping Romanticism. Polish folk spirit. Orchestral music by Zygmunt Noskowski. 20:07

1M ago20:07

20:07

Although the music of Polish composer Zygmunt Noskowski (1846–1909) is less well known than that of his teacher (Stanisław Moniuszko) and his students (Karol Szymanowski and Mieczysław Karłowicz), Noskowski was nonetheless the primary exponent of modern symphonic music in Poland for most of the 19th century; he also introduced the idea of the symph…

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Nezar AlSayyad and Heba Safey Eldeen, "Cinematic Cairo: Egyptian Urban Modernity from Reel to Real" (American U in Cairo Press, 2022) 1:08:10

1M ago1:08:10

1:08:10

The relationship between the city and cinema is formidable. The images and sounds of the city found in movies are perhaps the only experience that many people will have of cities they may never visit. Films influence the way we construct images of the world, and accordingly, in many instances, how we operate within it. Cinematic Cairo: Egyptian Urb…

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César Brioso, "Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball In Cuba" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) 42:49

2M ago42:49

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Today we are joined by César Brioso, author of the book Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball In Cuba (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Blending the love for baseball fans in Cuba had during the 1950s with the political upheaval that led to Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959, Brioso weaves a fascin…

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Bizarre and beautiful. Telemann, Vivaldi, Rosetti horn concertos. 20:07

2M ago20:07

20:07

In this podcast, Raymond Bisha unearths captivating performances of horn concertos by Rosetti, Vivaldi and Telemann. Did the latter have a few Steins of Alsterwasser to hand when depicting concertising frogs and crows? Listen on...

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Dan-el Padilla Peralta, "Classicism and Other Phobias" (Princeton UP, 2025) 50:52

2M ago50:52

50:52

Classicism and Other Phobias (Princeton University Press, 2025) shows how the concept of “classicism” lacks the capacity to affirm the aesthetic value of Black life and asks whether a different kind of classicism—one of insurgence, fugitivity, and emancipation—is possible. Engaging with the work of Sylvia Wynter and other trailblazers in Black stud…

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Ünver Rüstem, "Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul" (Princeton UP, 2019) 1:12:03

2M ago1:12:03

1:12:03

In Istanbul, there is a mosque on every hill. Cruising along the Bosphorus, either for pleasure, or like the majority of Istanbul’s denizens, for transit, you cannot help but notice that the city’s landscape would be dramatically altered without the mosques of the city. In Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanb…

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Valentin Silvestrov. A powerful voice, defiant in exile. 20:07

2M ago20:07

20:07

Valentin Silvestrov was forced to leave his native Ukraine after the Russian invasion of 2022. His music has a prescient quality that unerringly seems to express the fate of his homeland. Raymond Bisha introduces the world premiere recordings of his intimate Violin Concerto and the heartfelt, single-span Eighth Symphony. Notable for their economy o…

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A Sutured World - the music of Liza Lim 29:39

2M ago29:39

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This album with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra features music by Australian composer Liza Lim, with whom the orchestra has an ongoing relationship. Over the past decade the orchestra has been involved in commissioning all three works on this album: The Compass for orchestra with solo flute and digeridoo, A Sutured World for Cello and Orchest…

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Allan Doig, "A History of the Church through its Buildings" (Oxford UP, 2021) 37:15

2M ago37:15

37:15

A History of the Church through its Buildings (Oxford University Press, 2021) by Allan Doig takes the reader to meet people who lived through momentous religious changes in the very spaces where the story of the Church took shape. Buildings are about people, the people who conceived, designed, financed, and used them. Their stories become embedded …

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Alan Hovhaness. A prolific legacy of East-West synthesis. 20:01

2M ago20:01

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The music of Alan Hovhaness, one of America’s most prolific composers, enchants with his signature synthesis of East and West. Influenced by his Armenian heritage and a fascination with nature and spirituality, Hovhaness sought to create music “for all people, music which is beautiful and healing.” Raymond Bisha introduces the latest Naxos album of…

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Jake Kaner and Clive Edwards, "Conservation of Twentieth-Century Furniture" (Routledge, 2024) 46:06

2M ago46:06

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Conservation of Twentieth-Century Furniture (Routledge, 2024) provides comprehensive and accessible coverage of the materials and techniques that are encountered in furniture of this century. After putting the design, manufacture and conservation of twentieth-century furniture into context, the volume then offers an A-Z of materials organised into …

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The Piano Music of Alois Hába 25:48

2M ago25:48

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There is a span of nearly six decades between the first and last of the compositions on this album of piano music by Czech composer Alois Hába, with works written during various creative periods and with differing intentions. As a whole, they document both the development of the composer’s musical thinking and goals and the diversity of approach to…

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Ignacio G. Galán, "Furnishing Fascism: Modernist Design and Politics in Italy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 54:53

2M ago54:53

54:53

Along with the rise of Mussolini’s fascist regime, the interwar years in Italy also saw the widespread development of its modernist interior design and furnishing practices. While the regime’s politics were overtly manifest in monumental government architecture, Furnishing Fascism: Modernist Design and Politics in Italy (University of Minnesota Pre…

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Vasari Singers. Close harmony. Open perfection. 20:03

2M ago20:03

20:03

Vasari Singers, one of the UK's pre-eminent choirs, have titled their new album The Music Never Ends, referencing Michel Legrand and his celebrated song How do you Keep the Music Playing? And by the end of the album's twenty-one tracks, you'll wish it could be so. Raymond Bisha dips into the programme's multi-faceted offerings, while didgeridoo pla…

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Phil Tiemeyer, "Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants" (Cornell UP, 2025) 51:34

2M ago51:34

51:34

Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants (Cornell University Press, 2025) is a global history of postwar aviation that examines how states nurtured airlines for competing political and economic goals during the Cold War. While previous histories almost exclusively stress US and Western European aviation progress, Dr…

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Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, "Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office" (Bloomsbury, 2021) 50:05

2M ago50:05

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Albeit inspired by a progressive vision of a working environment without walls or hierarchies, the open plan office has come to be associated with some of the most dehumanizing and alienating aspects of the modern office. Jennifer Kaufman-Buhler's fascinating new book Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office (Bloomsbury, 2021) examines th…

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Susan L. Carruthers, "Making Do: Britons and the Refashioning of the Postwar World" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:09:21

2M ago1:09:21

1:09:21

Imagine a world in which clothing wasn't superabundant – cheap, disposable, indestructible – but perishable, threadbare and chronically scarce. Eighty years ago, when World War II ended, a textile famine loomed. What would everyone wear as uniforms were discarded and soldiers returned home, Nazi camps were liberated, and millions of uprooted people…

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Introducing piano works by Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez 24:46

3M ago24:46

24:46

Composer/poet Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1897. He went on to become a leading figure in the development of Brazil's classical music scene, as a composer, conductor, musicologist, and a professor of harmony in the National Music Institute in Rio de Janeiro, as well as other institutions. Along with Francisco Mignone and ot…

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An Introduction to the United Strings of Europe 26:55

3M ago26:55

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In this podcast Raymond Bisha talks with Julian Azkoul, Director of United Strings of Europe, about how the group started, about their album, and about how they started recording for BIS label at the invitation of their legendary founder and producer Robert von Bahr. It is hard to overstate how important Robert's unequivocal support was for the ens…

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"Just Biber". A new album with Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque 26:03

3M ago26:03

26:03

In Biber’s time, harmony was something cosmic, vibrating in a God-given resonance between human, instrumental, and celestial bodies. After all, the string instrument in early modern Europe was configured as a human body – with a neck, belly, and ribs to match. The Sonatas were therefore not only designed to delight, but also potentially to balm and…

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Paul R. Beckett, "An Anatomy of Tax Havens: Europe, the Caribbean and the United States of America" (de Gruyter, 2023) 1:00:21

3M ago1:00:21

1:00:21

Tax havens in offshore lands like Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas were once considered a rarity, the preserve of the super-rich. Today, they are big business available to the masses. Their goal? To avoid any form of accountability. Own nothing. Possess everything. Be answerable to no one. Where are these tax havens? What forms can t…

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Introducing the symphonic sphere of Leevi Madetoja 20:01

3M ago20:01

20:01

“I feel that you will achieve your greatest triumphs in [the symphonic] genre for I consider you to have precisely the properties that make a great symphonic composer. This is my firm belief.” Thus wrote Jan Sibelius in 1914 to his former student Leevi Madetoja. Raymond Bisha presents supporting evidence for that foresight in extracts from Madetoja…

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Maya J. Berry, "Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons" (Duke UP, 2025) 1:25:12

3M ago1:25:12

1:25:12

In Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons (Duke University Press, 2025), anthropologist and dancer Maya J. Berry examines rumba as a way of knowing the embodied and spiritual dimensions of Black political imagination in post-Fidel Cuba. Historically a Black working-class popular dance, rumba, Berry contends, is a…

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Halleluja Junction. American Music for Two Piano 19:47

3M ago19:47

19:47

The musical partnership of pianists Anna Geniushene and Lukas Geniušas, both esteemed prize-winners of major international competitions, is not just a testament to their flourishing solo careers and a shared musical heritage and philosophy. It is a profound expression of their deep emotional connection, a bond that resonates in their performances a…

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Joby Talbot details the progression of his ballet score, The Winter's Tale. 20:03

3M ago20:03

20:03

Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's ballet The Winter's Tale (after Shakespeare) was first performed by Covent Garden's Royal Ballet in 2014. In this podcast, the score's creative unfolding is described by composer Joby Talbot, prior to a 2025 performance of the ballet in New York City. The presenter is Raymond Bisha.…

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John Barr, "1960s University Buildings: The Golden Age of British Modern Architecture" (Lund Humphries, 2025) 57:39

3M ago57:39

57:39

The 1960s continue to hold an almost mythical place in Western culture, particularly in Britain, where change was widespread and infiltrated many aspects of life. This included architecture, whose role in a modern democracy and the form it should take were hotly debated. 1960s University Buildings: The Golden Age of British Modern Architecture (Lun…