* Barry Ulanov; Professor, Author, Expert on Jazz

Barry Ulanov, 82, a professor and author or translator of nearly 50 books whose interests included jazz, theater, Christian humanism, Carl Jung and the visual arts. Ulanov was born in New York City, where his father was concertmaster of Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Philharmonic. While at Columbia University, Ulanov edited the school’s literary magazine and published some of the first articles and cartoons by Thomas Merton. He went on to write some of the first serious books on jazz, including “Duke Ellington,” published in 1946, which was the first biography of Ellington. Ulanov placed popular culture within the context of American art, rather than isolating it as mere entertainment. After graduating from Columbia in 1939, he became the editor of Metronome, changing the publication’s focus from classical music to add coverage of jazz and black performers. During the 1940s and ‘50s, he wrote about jazz for Down Beat, Esquire and Vogue and championed pioneering performers such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. He taught college for nearly four decades, first at Princeton University and then at Barnard College, covering subjects as varied as literature, art, religion and psychology. After his conversion to Catholicism, the last two decades of his career were dedicated to a combined exploration of religion and psychology. On April 30 at his home in New York City.