Search results for ""Author Leonard"

Leonard Bernstein was arguably the most highly esteemed, influential, and charismatic American classical music personality of the twentieth century. Conductor, composer, pianist, writer, educator, and human rights activist, Bernstein truly led a life of Byronic intensity--passionate, risk-taking, and convention-breaking. In November 1989, just a year before his death, Bernstein invited writer Jonathan Cott to his country home in Fairfield, Connecticut for what turned out to be his last major interview--an unprecedented and astonishingly frank twelve-hour conversation. Now, in Dinner with Lenny, Cott provides a complete account of this remarkable dialogue in which Bernstein discourses with disarming frankness, humor, and intensity on matters musical, pedagogical, political, psychological, spiritual, and the unabashedly personal. Bernstein comes alive again, with vodka glass in hand, singing, humming, and making pointed comments on a wide array of topics, from popular music ("the Beatles were the best songwriters since Gershwin"), to great composers ("Wagner was always in a psychotic frenzy. He was a madman, a megalomaniac"), and politics (lamenting "the brainlessness, the mindlessness, the carelessness, and the heedlessness of the Reagans of the world"). And of course, Bernstein talks of conducting, advising students "to look at the score and make it come alive as if they were the composer. If you can do that, you're a conductorand if you can't, you're not. If I don't become Brahms or Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky when I'm conducting their works, then it won't be a great performance." After Rolling Stone magazine published an abridged version of the conversation in 1990, the Chicago Tribune praised it as "an extraordinary interview" filled with "passion, wit, and acute analysis." Studs Terkel called the interview "astonishing and revelatory." Now, this full-length version provides the reader with a unique, you-are-there perspective on what it was like to converse with this gregarious, witty, candid, and inspiring American dynamo.

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Publisher to the Decadents chronicles the experiences of Leonard Smithers (1861–1907), a key figure in the literary culture of late Victorian England. In his day he was known primarily for publishing books of upscale pornography. He became the publisher of choice for the Decadents, including most notably Oscar Wilde and Audrey Beardsley.While a young solicitor in his native Sheffield, Smithers established a correspondence with the famed explorer and translator of exotic texts, Captain Sir Richard Burton. Burton translated The Thousand Nights and a Night (popularly known as The Arabian Nights), which was published by Smithers in 1885. Smithers collaborated with Burton in the publication of two Latin texts, the Priapeia and the Carmina of Catullus, both of erotic cast. After the death of Burton in 1890, Smithers continued a significant involvement with his work, serving as an adviser to Lady Isabel Burton. During this time Smithers formed a partnership with Harry Sidney Nichols, and together they produced a series of pornographic books under the imprint of the Erotika Biblion Society.The years between 1895 and 1900 were Smithers’s glory years when he managed to publish a number of books illustrated by Beardsley, a magazine known as the Savoy, and books of verse by Ernest Dowson and Arthur Symons that have proved to be the finest expression of the Decadent Movement. Throughout his career Smithers sought to produce attractive, well-made books that were tastefully designed and printed.This book provides expansive insight into the prizes and pitfalls of an early English publisher of the decadent Nineties.

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See the film Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song from Sony Pictures Classics This “thoughtful and illuminating” (The New York Times) work of music journalism is an unforgettable, fascinating, and unexpected account of one of the most performed and beloved songs in pop history—Leonard Cohen’s heartrending “Hallelujah.” Featuring a new foreword and afterword by the author.When Leonard Cohen first wrote and recorded the song “Hallelujah,” it attracted little attention or airplay, dismissed by both fans and critics alike. Today, it is one of the most recorded songs in history, having been covered by a variety of music icons including Celine Dion, Bon Jovi, Willie Nelson, and, most famously, Jeff Buckley. It’s been featured on soundtracks as diverse as Shrek to The West Wing. And in the days after major tragedies, it has brought comfort to thousands after being featured in the MTV 9/11 tribute video and the telethon for the 2010 Haitian earthquake. So how did one relatively unknown song become an unofficial international anthem for human triumph and tragedy, one which each successive generation feels they have discovered and claimed as uniquely their own? Through in-depth interviews and expansive research, longtime music journalist Alan Light follows the captivating and improbable journey of “Hallelujah” to the heart of popular culture. Discover how great songs come to be, and how we as listeners have the endless ability to project a succession of meanings onto a cultural artifact, forever reinterpreting art through the lens of current events and the latest trends. “A combination mystery tale, detective story, pop critique, and sacred psalm of its own” (Daily News, New York),The Holy or the Broken is a revelatory and masterful exploration of the overwhelming power of music.

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Unseen Hastings and St Leonards features 250 views including previously unpublished photographs that will appeal to everyone with an interest in the history of Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea. Accompanied by informative captions, many of these rare images show streets, houses, shops, railway engines, trolleybuses, and people that have never appeared in print before. All aspects of everyday life are recorded here, offering a unique glimpse of bygone times for all who know and love this beautiful part of the Sussex coast.

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