Composers and songwriters Books

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Book SynopsisThe Estate of Amy Winehouse will donate 100% of the advance and royalties it receives from the production and sale of this book to The Amy Winehouse Foundation. These funds will help assist the charity in continuing their vital work helping thousands of young people to feel supported in managing their emotional wellbeing and making informed life choices.* Global icon Six-time Grammy winner Headline-maker The most talented recording artist of her generation Much has been said about Amy Winehouse since her tragic death aged at age 27. But who was the real Amy?Amy Winehouse: In Her Words shines a spotlight on her incredible writing talent, her wit, her charm and lust for life. Bringing together Amy’s own never-before-seen journals, handwritten lyrics and family photographs together for the first time, this intimate tribute traces her creative evolution from growing up in North London to global superstardom, and provides a rare insight into the girl who became a legend.* The Estate of Amy Winehouse will donate 100% of the advance and royalties it receives (net of agency fees charged) from the production and sale of this book to The Amy Winehouse Foundation (registered charity number1143740). The minimum donation will be 70,000. Initiatives include Amy’s Place, which provides addiction recovery housing for young women; resilience-building programs in schools and music therapy programs supporting children with special educational needs and life-limiting conditions. More information can be found at https://amywinehousefoundation.org.

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Book SynopsisThe Treasures of Noel Coward is a celebration of the life and work of this legendary figure, still a household name today, nearly 40 years after his death.

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Book SynopsisStep into the studio of one of the world's greatest pianistsTrade ReviewThis is a loving paean to Pressler (b. 1923) written by a former student with a wealth of input from other former students. . . . A good selection for collections supporting study of the piano. June 2009 * Choice *This book offers an invaluable insight into the world of this outstanding musician and his teaching. July 1, 2009 * American Music Teacher *Brown's Menahem Pressler allows us to gain a unique perspective on the contributions of this extraordinary man and the impact he has had on the lives and music making of so many. February 1, 2010 * Clavier Companion *Table of ContentsI: His Teaching 1. A Brief Biography2. The Studio3. Pressler's Early Training4. The Debussy Competition5. Opportunities in America6. Bloomington7. General Aspects of Pressler's Teaching 8. The Technical Approach9. Principles of Expressive Performance10. Guides for Practicing11. Technical Helps 12. Pressler's Humor13. Pressler at the Met: Beethoven's Sonata Op. 11014. Pressler at the TCU/Cliburn Piano InstituteII: The Music15. Johann Sebastian Bach, Partita No. 2 in C minor, S. 82616. Béla Bartók, Out of Doors17. Ludwig van Beethoven, Concerto No. 5 in E- flat major, Op. 73 "Emperor" Beethoven, Sonata, Op. 81a "Les adieux"18. Johannes Brahms, Sonata in F-sharp minor, Op. 2Brahms, Trio in B Major, Op. 819. Frédéric Chopin, Nocturne in E major, Op. 62 No.2Chopin, Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 5820. Claude Debussy, Selected Preludes"Les collines d'Anacapri" (Bk. 1, No. 5)"Feux d'artifice" (Bk. 2, No. 12)Debussy, L'Isle Joyeuse21. Joseph Haydn, Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI:5022. Franz Liszt, Après une lecture du Dante23. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata in B-flat major, K. 28124. Serge Prokofiev, Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major, Op. 8325. Maurice Ravel, Gaspard de la NuitRavel, Le Tombeau de CouperinRavel, Piano Trio in A minor26. Franz Schubert, Fantasie in C Major, D. 760, "Wanderer"27. Robert Schumann, Concerto in A minor, Op. 54Schumann, Kreisleriana, Op. 1628. Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, Concerto in B-flat minor, Op. 2329. Carl Maria von Weber, "Perpetual Motion" (Sonata in C major, Op. 24, Finale)Appendix A: Pressler's Musical AncestryAppendix B: Lineage of Piano TeachersAppendix C: TributesAppendix D: Studio Rosters (1955-2007)BibliographyIndex of Compositions

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Book SynopsisShortly before his second birthday, Allison Moorer''s son, John Henry, stopped using the twenty-seven words he had learned. John Henry''s diagnosis of nonverbal autism was devastating, even though Allison knew in her bones that something was shifting. In the years since then, Allison and John Henry have embarked on a powerful journey-filled with the heartbreak, adventure, confusion, and unending love that are the hallmarks of a quest for understanding.In I Dream He Talks to Me, Allison details the temper tantrums, the toilet accidents, the moments of unexpected grace, and the pain of never truly knowing her son''s hopes, fears, or what he loves with the same gorgeous prose that is a hallmark of her first memoir, Blood. I Dream He Talks to Me is an exploration of resilience, compassion, and how to find things to celebrate every day. A moving meditation on communication-what words mean, what they don''t, and how we strive to do the best for those care for-it is

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of the world’s most famous and challenging song cycle, Schubert's Winter Journey (Winterreise), by a leading interpreter of the work, who teases out the themes—literary, historical, psychological—that weave through the twenty-four songs that make up this legendary masterpiece.Completed in the last months of the young Schubert’s life, Winterreise has come to be considered the single greatest piece of music in the history of Lieder. Deceptively laconic—these twenty-four short poems set to music for voice and piano are performed uninterrupted in little more than an hour—it nonetheless has an emotional depth and power that no music of its kind has ever equaled. A young man, rejected by his beloved, leaves the house where he has been living and walks out into snow and darkness. As he wanders away from the village and into the empty countryside, he experiences a cascade of emotions—loss, grief, anger, an

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Book SynopsisA candid and eye-opening inside look at the final decades of Sinatra''s life told by his longtime manager and friend, Eliot Weisman. By the time Weisman met Sinatra in 1976, he was already the Voice, a man who held sway over popular music and pop culture for forty years, who had risen to the greatest heights of fame and plumbed the depths of failure, all the while surviving with the trademark swagger that women pined for and men wanted to emulate. Passionate and generous on his best days, sullen and unpredictable on his worst, Sinatra invited Weisman into his inner circle, an honor that the budding celebrity manager never took for granted. Even when he was caught up in a legal net designed to snare Sinatra, Weisman went to prison rather than being coerced into telling prosecutors what they wanted to hear. With Weisman''s help, Sinatra orchestrated in his final decades some of the most memorable moments of his career. There was the Duets album, which was S

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Book Synopsis"The best thing to happen to Bing Crosby since Bob Hope," (WSJ) Gary Giddins presents the second volume of his masterful multi-part biography

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Book SynopsisJ. Randy Taraborrelli is the author of ten books including the international bestsellers Madonna: An Intimate Biography, Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness, Once Upon a Time: The Story of Princess Grace, Prince Rainier and Their Family and Call Her Miss Ross. He has also written for The Times and the Daily Mail.

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Book SynopsisAlex Stobbs is determined to make every day count. Despite suffering from cystic fibrosis and enduring a gruelling regime of drugs and treatment, he has already achieved more in his nineteen years than many do in a lifetime. A musical prodigy, he was the subject of the Bafta-nominated documentary, A Boy Called Alex, and millions watched as he achieved his dream - to conduct the Bach Magnificat.Now at university, Alex is preparing for his next challenge: to conduct the three-hour-long St Matthew Passion. Struggling to balance university life with the demands of constant rehearsals, and hospitalised in the last few weeks before the performance, Alex remains determined to pull off the greatest performance of his life. Introduced by his mother, Suzanne, this is a memoir of remarkable humour and energy, which shows that it is not Alex''s illness that makes him extraordinary, but his determination to achieve his dreams in spite of it.Trade ReviewPRAISE FOR THE DOCUMENTARY A BOY CALLED ALEX * : *[Alex] was vastly intelligent, perpetually good-humoured, at no point lapsing into either self-pity or fatalism . . . I would guess Alex's cheerfulness was a quite conscious piece of defiance. * Independent *Alex's final thumbs-up as he took his curtain call - expressed the sheer exhilarating joy in being alive. * Times Online *

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Book Synopsis#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time, in his own words—featuring never-before-seen photos, original scrapbooks and lyric sheets, and the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic deathNAMED ONE OF THE BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE GUARDIAN • NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD  Prince was a musical genius, one of the most beloved, accomplished, and acclaimed musicians of our time. He was a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of “Uptown” to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of “Paisley Park.” But his most ambitious creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, one of the greatest pop stars of any era. The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince—a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is the memoir Prince was writing before his tragic death, pages that bring us into his childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us through Prince’s early years as a musician, before his first album was released, via an evocative scrapbook of writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince’s evolution through candid images that go up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book’s fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain—the final stage in Prince’s self-creation, where he retells the autobiography of the first three parts as a heroic journey. The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring’s riveting and moving introduction about his profound collaboration with Prince in his final months—a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated—and annotations that provide context to the book’s images. This work is not just a tribute to an icon, but an original and energizing literary work in its own right, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image—his undying gift to the world.

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Book SynopsisRecognized as the primary American symphonist of the 20th century, Roger Sessions (1896-1985) is one of the leading representatives of high modernism. This title brings together material, such as letters, lectures, interviews, and articles, to focus on the life and music of this major American composer.Table of ContentsContents Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: Family History Forty Acres and Phelps House--Archibald Sessions--417 Washington Avenue--109 Elm Street--Cloyne, Kingsley, and Kent--Harvard--Harvard Musical Review Chapter Two: Yale through The Cleveland Institute Yale--World War I--Barbara Foster--George Bartlett--Ernest Bloch--Cleveland Institute of Music--The Black Maskers--Friends--Summer of 1924--Stravinsky Chapter Three: The European Period Father figures--Florence --Symphony No. 1--Boulanger and Copland--The American Academy in Rome--Berlin Chapter Four: The Decade 1936-1946 Marriage and the Violin Concerto--David Diamond--Princeton--Symphony No. 2 Chapter Five: The Trial of Lucullus through Montezuma Berkeley--The Trial of Lucullus-- Schoenberg and Dallapiccola--Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4--Montezuma Chapter Six: The Last Two Decades

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Book SynopsisA Times, Spectator, TLS and BBC Music Magazine Book of the YearA major biography of Ravi Shankar published on the centenary of his birth: the first full portrait of the man and the artist across his extraordinary ninety-two years.

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisA biography of one of the 20th-century's most famous musicians.Trade Review"Paul Myers writes concisely and entertainingly... Will make readers long to hear the music."—Times Literary Supplement On the 20th Century Composers Series "As a series, Phaidon's 20th Century Composers has brought remarkable variety and a welter of information, both necessary and delightfully trivial. Intended both for the general reader and for the more enthusiastically musical."—The Scotsman

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