Download or read book Charles Jessold Considered as a Murderer written by Wesley Stace and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The Wall Street Journal's Best fiction books of 2011 England, 1923. A gentleman critic named Leslie Shepherd tells the macabre story of a gifted young composer, Charles Jessold. On the eve of his revolutionary new opera's premiere, Jessold murders his wife and her lover, and then commits suicide in a scenario that strangely echoes the plot of his opera---which Shepherd has helped to write. The opera will never be performed. Shepherd first shares his police testimony, then recalls his relationship with Jessold in his role as critic, biographer, and friend. And with each retelling of the story, significant new details cast light on the identity of the real victim in Jessold's tragedy. This ambitiously intricate novel is set against a turbulent moment in music history, when atonal sounds first reverberated through the concert halls of Europe, just as the continent readied itself for war. What if Jessold's opera was not only a betrayal of Shepherd, but of England as well? Wesley Stace has crafted a dazzling story of counter-melodies and counter-narratives that will keep you guessing to the end.
Download or read book The Rest Is Noise written by Alex Ross and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.
Download or read book English Pastoral Music written by Eric Saylor and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering works by popular figures like Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst as well as less familiar English composers, Eric Saylor's pioneering book examines pastoral music's critical, theoretical, and stylistic foundations alongside its creative manifestations in the contexts of Arcadia, war, landscape, and the Utopian imagination. As Saylor shows, pastoral music adapted and transformed established musical and aesthetic conventions that reflected the experiences of British composers and audiences during the early twentieth century. By approaching pastoral music as a cultural phenomenon dependent on time and place, Saylor forcefully challenges the body of critical opinion that has long dismissed it as antiquated, insular, and reactionary.
Download or read book Music in American Life 4 volumes written by Jacqueline Edmondson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-10-03 with total page 1470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating exploration of the relationship between American culture and music as defined by musicians, scholars, and critics from around the world. Music has been the cornerstone of popular culture in the United States since the beginning of our nation's history. From early immigrants sharing the sounds of their native lands to contemporary artists performing benefit concerts for social causes, our country's musical expressions reflect where we, as a people, have been, as well as our hope for the future. This four-volume encyclopedia examines music's influence on contemporary American life, tracing historical connections over time. Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between this art form and our society. Entries include singers, composers, lyricists, songs, musical genres, places, instruments, technologies, music in films, music in political realms, and music shows on television.
Download or read book Man with a Pan written by John Donohue and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2011-05-17 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Look who’s making dinner! Twenty-one of our favorite writers and chefs expound upon the joys—and perils—of feeding their families. Mario Batali’s kids gobble up monkfish liver and foie gras. Peter Kaminsky’s youngest daughter won’t eat anything at all. Mark Bittman reveals the four stages of learning to cook. Stephen King offers tips about what to cook when you don’t feel like cooking. And Jim Harrison shows how good food and wine trump expensive cars and houses. This book celebrates those who toil behind the stove, trying to nourish and please. Their tales are accompanied by more than sixty family-tested recipes, time-saving tips, and cookbook recommendations, as well as New Yorker cartoons. Plus there are interviews with homestyle heroes from all across America—a fireman in Brooklyn, a football coach in Atlanta, and a bond trader in Los Angeles, among others. What emerges is a book not just about food but about our changing families. It offers a newfound community for any man who proudly dons an apron and inspiration for those who have yet to pick up the spatula.
Download or read book Wonderkid written by Wesley Stace and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “hilarious” novel of a rock and roll dream gone awry (The New York Times Book Review). The Wonderkids are living the dream: sold-out concerts, screaming fans, TV shows, number-one hits. Unfortunately, it’s because the lead singer, Blake Lear, made a deal—wild success in exchange for transforming the band into a children’s entertainment act. Now the seats are packed with grade schoolers instead of cool hipsters, and the television appearances happen on Saturday morning. But hey, rock and roll has always been for the kids, right? The money is good, and things go very right—until they go very wrong. The temptations of the road are many, and the Wonderkids are big kids, too. Narrated by a boy whom Blake adopts on a whim, who becomes the band’s disciple, merch guy, amateur psychologist, and—eventually—damage control guru, Wonderkid is a delirious and surprisingly touching novel of the dangers of compromise, thwarted ambition, and fathers and sons, told with tremendous humor and energy. “If Stace’s latest novel, his fourth, rings true, it’s because he is writing what he knows. For 25 years, he performed smart indie rock under the pseudonym John Wesley Harding . . . A great rock ’n’ roll novel.” —The Boston Globe “Deliciously entertaining.” —The Wall Street Journal “[Wonderkid is] sweet and funny and knowing—and this is me, holding up my lighter for more.” —Joshua Ferris, National Book Award finalist and author of Then We Came to the End
Download or read book Dylan written by Jon Bream and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Listen to every side: “Gorgeously rendered. . . . a unique spin on the discography.” —Booklist Covering each of Bob Dylan’s thirty-six studio LPs, this book brings rock ‘n’ roll musicians, songwriters, and critics together to sound off about each release, discussing and debating not only Dylan’s extraordinary musical accomplishments but the factors in his life that influenced his musical expressions. Beautifully illustrated with LP art and period photography, as well as performance and candid backstage images, the book also contains liner notes-like details about the recordings and session musicians, and provides context and perspective on Dylan’s career—in a one-of-a-kind retrospective of the life and music of an American legend. Commentators include Questlove of the Roots and the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Rodney Crowell, Jason Isbell, Suzanne Vega, Ric Ocasek of the Cars, Wesley Stace (aka John Wesley Harding), longtime Dylan pal Eric Andersen and Minnesota musicians Tony Glover and Kevin Odegard, both of whom have been in the studio with Dylan. Other well-known voices in Dylan: Disc by Disc include Robert Christgau, Anthony DeCurtis, Alan Light, Joe Levy, Holly George-Warren, Joel Selvin, Jim Fusilli, Geoffrey Himes, Charles R. Cross, and David Browne, among others.
Download or read book Bright s Passage written by Josh Ritter and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER Henry Bright has newly returned to West Virginia from the battlefields of the First World War. Griefstruck by the death of his young wife and unsure of how to care for the infant son she left behind, Bright is soon confronted by the destruction of the only home he’s ever known. His hopes for safety rest with the angel who has followed him to Appalachia from the trenches of France and who now promises to protect him and his son. Haunted by the abiding nightmare of his experiences in the war and shadowed by his dead wife’s father, the Colonel, and his two brutal sons, Bright—along with his newborn—makes his way through a ravaged landscape toward an uncertain salvation. DON’T MISS THE EXCLUSIVE CONVERSATION BETWEEN JOSH RITTER AND NEIL GAIMAN IN THE BACK OF THE BOOK.
Download or read book The Kings and Queens of Roam written by Daniel Wallace and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When their parents die an untimely death, a blind, nai ve younger sister becomes wholly dependent on her bitter and conniving older sister, who overprotectively imparts stories of a brutal and dangerous world until the younger sister makes a surprising choice.
Download or read book Misfortune written by Wesley Stace and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-07-31 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lord Loveall, heretofore heirless lord of the sprawling Love Hall, is the richest man in England. He arrives home one morning with a most unusual package - a baby that he presents as the inheritor to the family name and fortune. In honor of his beloved sister, who died young, Loveall names the baby Rose. The household, relieved at the continuation of the Loveall line, ignores the fact that this Rose has a thorn...that she is, in fact, a boy. Rose grows up with the two servant children who are her only friends, blissfully unaware of her own gender, casually hitting boundaries at Love Hall's yearly cricket game and learning to shave even as she continues to wear more and more elaborate dresses. Until, of course, the fateful day when Rose's world comes crashing down around her, and she is banished from Love Hall as an impostor by those who would claim her place as heir.
Download or read book Mount Terminus written by David Grand and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A novel set in Los Angeles at the turn of the 20th century that explores early Hollywood, the advent of the motion picture studio, pre-cinematic technology,and the Jewish diaspora"
Download or read book Under the Same Stars written by Tim Lott and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When two brothers take a road trip to visit their ill father, their journey reveals, not only an unexpected friendship, but also some surprising truth It is late summer 2008 and forty-year-old Salinger Nash, who has been plagued since adolescence by a mercurial depression, leaves the north-west London house he shares with girlfriend for his older brother, Carson's home in New Orleans. It is Carson who has persuaded Salinger that they should visit their estranged father on his deathbed in Las Cruces, and use it as an opportunity to heal old wounds. However it is with a sense of foreboding that Salinger sets off with his brother on a road trip from New Orleans in Carson's prized brand new Lexus, as their relationship is far from amicable. Tender, funny, unflinching, this is a road trip story in the great American literary tradition and an exploration of sibling rivalry that harks back to Cain and Abel. It is a vivid glimpse of a country through the eyes of an outsider, a profound exploration of brotherhood and a gripping journey of the soul. 'With its tender, funny, unflinchingly exploration of sibling rivalry, this is a vivid glimpse of a country through the eyes of an outsider, a profound exploration of brotherhood and a gripping journey of the soul' - GQ 'There is a tragic rejection at the heart of the story. Lott is attempting to solve what he sees as a deep-rooted crime against humanity, excavating the blank spaces beneath the rawness of everyday life' - Independent 'Under the Same Stars, a tender-hearted novel of sibling rivalries, is no less memorable than his family memoir The Scent of Dried Roses' - Spectator
Download or read book The Kings and Queens of Roam written by Daniel Wallace and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the celebrated author of "Big Fish," an imaginative, moving novel about two sisters and the dark legacy and magical town that entwine them. In this new novel, a Southern literary master returns to the tradition of tall-tales and folklore.
Download or read book By George written by Wesley Stace and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-07-31 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By George is the utterly original story of a flawed but formidable family - and of two very different boys. One is an eleven-year-old schoolboy, the other a ventriloquist's dummy. With no voice of his own but plenty to say, the dummy tells his life story; from his humble beginnings in the 1930s to his rise in fame as force's favourite during the war and the horrible secret he's been made to keep. Years later, his self-possessed but vulnerable namesake finds himself packed off to boarding school, far from his mother Frankie, dynamic actress and Principal Boy; his grandma Queenie, children's party entertainer extraordinaire; and his bed-ridden but redoubtable great-grandmother. While the dummy lies dusty, silent and forgotten, his young counterpart sets out to learn about his dead grandfather's past as a world-famous ventriloquist, his magical powers and their family's curious history.
Download or read book Austerlitz written by W.G. Sebald and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2011-12-06 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Austerlitz, the internationally acclaimed masterpiece by “one of the most gripping writers imaginable” (The New York Review of Books), is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, one Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, he follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion.
Download or read book Bright s Passage written by Josh Ritter and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER Henry Bright has newly returned to West Virginia from the battlefields of the First World War. Griefstruck by the death of his young wife and unsure of how to care for the infant son she left behind, Bright is soon confronted by the destruction of the only home he’s ever known. His hopes for safety rest with the angel who has followed him to Appalachia from the trenches of France and who now promises to protect him and his son. Haunted by the abiding nightmare of his experiences in the war and shadowed by his dead wife’s father, the Colonel, and his two brutal sons, Bright—along with his newborn—makes his way through a ravaged landscape toward an uncertain salvation. DON’T MISS THE EXCLUSIVE CONVERSATION BETWEEN JOSH RITTER AND NEIL GAIMAN IN THE BACK OF THE BOOK.
Download or read book Electric Eden written by Rob Young and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-08-19 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rob Young's Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music is a seminal book on British music and cultural heritage, that spans the visionary classical and folk tradition from the nineteenth-century to the present day. 'A thoroughly enjoyable read and likely to remain the best-written overview for a long time.' GUARDIAN 'A perfectly timed, perfectly pitched alternative history of English folk music . . . wide-ranging, insightful, authoritative, thoroughly entertaining.' NEW STATESMAN 'A stunning achievement.' SIMON REYNOLDS 'A masterpiece.' CAUGHT BY THE RIVER 'Excellent . . . blissfully quotable.' NEW YORK TIMES 'An authoritative account.' THE TIMES 'Consistently absorbing.' INDEPENDENT 'An impassioned and infectious rallying cry of a book.' SUNDAY TIMES In this groundbreaking survey of more than a century of music making in the British Isles, Rob Young investigates how the idea of folk has been handed down and transformed by successive generations - song collectors, composers, Marxist revivalists, folk-rockers, psychedelic voyagers, free festival-goers, experimental pop stars and electronic innovators. In a sweeping panorama of Albion's soundscape that takes in the pioneer spirit of Cecil Sharp; the pastoral classicism of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Peter Warlock; the industrial folk revival of Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd; the folk-rock of Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Shirley Collins, John Martyn and Pentangle; the bucolic psychedelia of The Incredible String Band, The Beatles and Pink Floyd; the acid folk of Comus, Forest, Mr Fox and Trees; The Wicker Man and occult folklore; the early Glastonbury and Stonehenge festivals; and the visionary pop of Kate Bush, Julian Cope and Talk Talk, Electric Eden maps out a native British musical voice that reflects the complex relationships between town and country, progress and nostalgia, radicalism and conservatism. An attempt to isolate the 'Britishness' of British music - a wild combination of pagan echoes, spiritual quest, imaginative time-travel, pastoral innocence and electrified creativity - Electric Eden will be treasured by anyone interested in the tangled story of Britain's folk music and Arcadian dreams. 'A treat.' TIME OUT 'Young is a fine writer.' MOJO 'Young's immense narrative is both educative and gripping.' UNCUT 'A multitudinous, fascinating and beautifully written account.' TLS
