Publisher's Synopsis
Euan Macdonald's Selected Standards is an artist's book that combines title pages from sheet music found in a secondhand store in Los Angeles with drawings and aerial photographs of the city. The represented songs are hits from jazz musicals from the 1940s and 50s. Some are well-known standards, while others are obscure. The song titles contain philosophical moments, familiar and peripheral experiences--some imagining a better world or offering a fleeting chance to escape our own. When he first encountered the sheet music, Macdonald was intrigued by the narrative relationship that developed between the titles, which are presented in the order in which they were originally found. In the spirit of improvisation and free association so closely linked with jazz, Macdonald paired each song with drawings made in his studio and aerial photographs of Los Angeles.
