Lost Secrets of Master Musicians


Book Description

Can talent be explained? The "secret" techniques and musical insights of classical music's greatest performers are revealed by David Jacobson, founder/director of the San Francisco Institute of Music and graduate of Curtis Institute of Music. This window into their genius will transform and revitalize the art of classical music.




The Russian Violin School


Book Description

The Russian Violin School: The Legacy of Yuri Yankelevich is the first English translation of the methodological works by Yuri Yankelevich, one of the most important violin teachers of 20th Century Russia. Casting an entirely new light on the Russian Violin School, this book includes two original texts by Yankelevich addressing positioning and shifting, along with material by prominent violinists examining his pedagogy.




Things Hoped For


Book Description

Seventeen-year-old Gwen is preparing to audition for New York City’s top music schools when her grandfather mysteriously disappears, leaving Gwen only a phone message telling her not to worry. But there’s nothing more stressful than practicing for her auditions, not knowing where her grandfather is, and being forced to lie about his whereabouts when her insistent great-uncle demands an audience with him. Then Gwen meets Robert, also in town for music auditions, and the two pair up to brave the city without supervision. As auditions approach and her great-uncle becomes more aggressive, Gwen and Robert make a startling discovery. Suddenly Gwen’s hopes are turned upside down, and she and Robert are united in ways neither of them could have foretold. . . .




Oboe Secrets


Book Description

Modeled on the brilliant approach first formulated by distinguished professor of music and master clarinetist Michele Gingras in Clarinet Secrets and More Clarinet Secrets (both available from Scarecrow Press), Music Secrets for the Advanced Musician: A Scarecrow Press Music Series is designed for instrumentalists, singers, conductors, composers, and other instructors and professionals seeking a quick set of pointers to improve their work as performers and producers of music. Easy to use and intended for the advanced musician, contributions to the Music Secrets series fill a niche for those who have moved beyond what beginners and intermediate practitioners need. In Oboe Secrets: 75 Performance Strategies for the Advanced Oboist and English Horn Player, Jacqueline Leclair tackles the oboe’s reputation as an especially difficult instrument and illustrates how oboists and English horn players can overcome common challenges. Leclair draws on her experience as a performer and instructor, offering practical tips and sometimes revolutionary ideas for rethinking oboe pedagogy. Leclair also looks at performance strategies in the areas of equipment maintenance and management, physical health, and performance technique. Her secrets focus on such matters as how to optimize practice sessions, build endurance, improve use of the body when playing, work with reeds, and apply extended techniques. Oboe Secrets provides oboists and English horn players a quick and efficient path to significant improvement—both technically and musically—in their playing.It is the perfect resource for advanced high school oboists, professional performers, music instructors, and avid amateur musicians.




The Lost Paradise


Book Description

The urban centers of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia are home to performance traditions whose practitioners trace them to al-Andalus, or medieval Muslim Spain. According to its devotees, the repertoire was passed down over the centuries from master to disciple. Today it is ubiquitous in the Maghreb and its diaspora, and is held up as a quasi-official classical music that expresses an abiding link to a prestigious precolonial past. Despite its deep roots, Andalusi music has also profoundly changed in the past one hundred years, and it is now considered a threatened art. In "The Lost Paradise," Jonathan Glasser accounts for the longevity of Andalusi music s revivalist project through ethnographic and archival research carried out in Algeria, Morocco, and France. He treats Andalusi music as a circulatory practice that privileges the transmission of embodied knowledge from master to disciple. The genealogical model embeds Andalusi music in social relations, closely linking it to the cultivation of old urban identities that reach across North Africa and into al-Andalus. At the same time, it is precisely the genealogical model that makes the repertoire so elusive as a social practice, giving rise to both the longstanding claim that some masters withhold valuable songs and the efforts to counteract alleged hoarding via the printed word. By looking to the performative, textual, institutional, and emotive practices surrounding Andalusi music, Glasser evokes a tradition animated by subtle tensions between secrecy and publicness, keeping and giving, embodiment and detachment."




The Lost Waves of Time


Book Description

The mind-blowing story of how music - the sound vibrational matrix of infinite variety - literally shaped human history.




Moving to Higher Ground


Book Description

In this beautiful book, Pulitzer Prize—winning musician and composer Wynton Marsalis draws upon lessons he’s learned from a lifetime in jazz–lessons that can help us all move to higher ground. With wit and candor he demystifies the music that is the birthright of every American and demonstrates how a real understanding of the central idea of jazz–the unique balance between self-expression and sacrifice for the common good exemplified on the bandstand–can enrich every aspect of our lives, from the bedroom to the boardroom, from the schoolroom to City Hall. Along the way, Marsalis helps us understand the life-changing message of the blues, reveals secrets about playing–and listening–and passes on wisdom he has gleaned from working with three generations of great musicians. Illuminating and inspiring, Moving to Higher Ground is a master class on jazz and life, conducted by a brilliant American artist.




The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory


Book Description

"An utterly satisfying examination of the business of popular music." —Nathaniel Rich, The Atlantic There’s a reason today’s ubiquitous pop hits are so hard to ignore—they’re designed that way. The Song Machine goes behind the scenes to offer an insider’s look at the global hit factories manufacturing the songs that have everyone hooked. Full of vivid, unexpected characters—alongside industry heavy-hitters like Katy Perry, Rihanna, Max Martin, and Ester Dean—this fascinating journey into the strange world of pop music reveals how a new approach to crafting smash hits is transforming marketing, technology, and even listeners’ brains. You’ll never think about music the same way again. A Wall Street Journal Best Business Book




The Mozart Season


Book Description

"Remember, what's down inside you, all covered up—the things of your soul. The important, secret things . . . The story of you, all buried, let the music caress it out into the open." When Allegra was a little girl, she thought she would pick up her violin and it would sing for her—that the music was hidden inside her instrument. Now that Allegra is twelve, she believes the music is in her fingers, and the summer after seventh grade she has to teach them well. She's the youngest contestant in the Ernest Bloch Young Musicians' Competition. She knows she will learn the notes to the concerto, but what she doesn't realize is she'll also learn how to close the gap between herself and Mozart to find the real music inside her heart. The Mozart Season includes an interview with author Virginia Euwer Wolff.




Music Trades


Book Description