David Amram has composed more than one hundred orchestral and chamber works; written many scores for Broadway theater and film, including the classic scores for the films Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate; composed two operas, including the ground-breaking Holocaust opera The Final Ingredient; and composed the score for the landmark 1959 documentary Pull My Daisy, narrated by Jack Kerouac. He is the author of the books Vibrations, an autobiography, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac, and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat."A pioneer of jazz French horn and World Music, he is also a virtuoso on piano, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion, and dozens of folkloric… instruments from twenty-five countries. He is also an inventive, funny improvisational lyricist. He has collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, who chose him as the New York Philharmonic's first composer-in-residence in 1966, Langston Hughes, Dizzy Gillespie, Willie Nelson, Th
Pal Maher, Jr. is the author of Kerouac: His Life and Work and the editor of the critically acclaimed collection Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac. One of today's top Kerouac scholars, Maher is a book critic for the Toronto Star and served as the editor of the Kerouac Quarterly. He has been hailed by historian Douglas Brinkley as "one of the new leaders" of Kerouac scholarship. Maher lives in Fitchburg, MA.