Download or read book Three Pianos written by Andrew McMahon and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From beloved indie musician Andrew McMahon comes a searingly honest and beautifully written memoir about the challenges and triumphs of his life and career, as seen through the lens of his personal connection to three pianos. Andrew McMahon grew up in sunny Southern California as a child prodigy, learning to play piano and write songs at a very early age, stunning schoolmates and teachers alike with his gift for performing and his unique ability to emotionally connect with audiences. McMahon would go on to become the lead singer and songwriter for Something Corporate and Jack's Mannequin, and to release his debut solo album, Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, in 2014. But behind this seemingly optimistic and quintessentially American story of big dreams come true lies a backdrop of overwhelming challenges that McMahon has faced—from a childhood defined by his father's struggle with addiction to his very public battle with leukemia in 2005 at the age of twenty-three, as chronicled in the intensely personal documentary Dear Jack. Overcoming those odds, McMahon has found solace and hope in the things that matter most, including family, the healing power of music and the one instrument he's always turned to: his piano. Three Pianos takes readers on a beautifully rendered and bitter-sweet American journey, one filled with inspiration, heartbreak, and an unwavering commitment to shedding our past in order to create a better future.
Download or read book The Pianist written by Wladyslaw Szpilman and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2000-09-02 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The memoir that inspired Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film, which won the Cannes Film Festival's most prestigious prize—the Palme d'Or. Named one of the Best Books of 1999 by the Los Angeles Times On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside—so loudly that he couldn't hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air. Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, The Pianist is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling.
Download or read book Piano Girl written by Robin Meloy Goldsby and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2006-05 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This entertaining memoir provides a glimpse into the comedies, tragedies, and mundane miracles witnessed from the business perspective of a world-traveling lounge musician.
Download or read book Memoirs of a Piano written by Kyra Petrovskaya Wayne and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2007-09-04 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MEMOIRS OF A PIANO is a whimsical chronicle of the vicissitudes of fortune of a French piano during more than a century of historical upheavals. In its own voice Piano regales us with many stories, thus joining some of its famous predecessors such as Voltaire’s bed or Jonathan Swift’s tub, or even Gogol’s nose and Kafka’s cockroach, who all talked! And what stories piano tells! It tells us how it had almost ended up on the barricades during the French Commune. It describes Franz Liszt who had used it at a concert. It meets young prodigy Claude Debussy and travels with him to Russia where it becomes a house piano of the wealthy patroness of Tchaikovsky. Fate interferes with piano’s happy collaboration with Debussy, sending the young man back to France to become eventually world famous composer and the founder of the Impressionism, while piano becomes a witness to the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin on the Black Sea in 1905. Piano’s adventures continue with the dramatic escape from the Red Revolution aboard the yacht Renaissance belonging to a Russian Count. Safe in Turkey, the Count sells the yacht along with the piano to an eccentric American millionaire who renames the boat and sails her among the Greek Islands, buying antiquities. The yacht and the piano barely survive vicious Atlantic storms on their way to New Orleans, where the ruined piano is discarded and abandoned on the beach. It is rescued by a group of black musicians, who repair it and move it to a club where it has to learn the new music- Jazz! The saga of the French piano continues in America, eventually leading to piano’s vainglorious participation in the cruelest sport of the Great Depression-Marathon Dancing. The piano survives it all. Finally, when it ends up among the props at the MGM Movie Studio, and is sold at the famous MGM auction in 1970, piano is an old and wise instrument, which views its history with a touch of nostalgia. It still wants to serve Apollo, the god of light and music, but it has a secret desire to work with young musicians on the threshold of their fame, as it did once with Debussy, at the start of his life. And at last, the great piano’s desire is fulfilled.
Download or read book Memoirs and Reflections written by Evgeny Kissin and published by University Press of New England. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evgeny Kissin is an internationally renowned classical pianist admired for his interpretations of the repertoires of Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Prokofiev. The intensity of Kissin's thinking animates this candid memoir, illuminating his astonishing memory, his fondness for his family and teachers, and his artistic sense of self. Memoirs and Reflections chronicles Kissin's musical education and his early career. His writing is infused with his lifelong engagement with music: an obsessive love that captured, challenged, and nurtured him from a young age. He recounts fortuitous events and serendipitous encounters with remarkable musicians and conductors, including Herbert von Karajan. This book shows Kissin to be surprisingly modest and down-to-earth in spite of his astonishing gift. He writes of his family and friends with tender affection and touching detail. Reading this intimate memoir is like having a private audience with the great pianist himself.
Download or read book The Piano Shop on the Left Bank written by Thad Carhart and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2002-03-12 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walking his two young children to school every morning, Thad Carhart passes an unassuming little storefront in his Paris neighborhood. Intrigued by its simple sign—Desforges Pianos—he enters, only to have his way barred by the shop’s imperious owner. Unable to stifle his curiosity, he finally lands the proper introduction, and a world previously hidden is brought into view. Luc, the atelier’s master, proves an indispensable guide to the history and art of the piano. Intertwined with the story of a musical friendship are reflections on how pianos work, their glorious history, and stories of the people who care for them, from amateur pianists to the craftsmen who make the mechanism sing. The Piano Shop on the Left Bank is at once a beguiling portrait of a Paris not found on any map and a tender account of the awakening of a lost childhood passion. Praise for The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: “[Carhart’s] writing is fluid and lovely enough to lure the rustiest plunker back to the piano bench and the most jaded traveler back to Paris.” –San Francisco Chronicle “Captivating . . . [Carhart] joins the tiny company of foreigners who have written of the French as verbs. . . . What he tries to capture is not the sight of them, but what they see.” –The New York Times “Thoroughly engaging . . . In part it is a book about that most unpredictable and pleasurable of human experiences, serendipity. . . . The book is also about something more difficult to pin down, friendship and community.” –The Washington Post “Carhart writes with a sensuousness enhanced by patience and grounded by the humble acquisition of new insight into music, his childhood, and his relationship to the city of Paris.” –The New Yorker NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
Download or read book Mastering Piano Technique written by Seymour Fink and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 1992 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Amadeus). This holistic approach to the keyboard, based on a sound understanding of the relationship between physical function and musical purpose, is an invaluable resource for pianists and teachers. Professor Fink explains his ideas and demonstrates his innovative developmental exercises that set the pianist free to express the most profound musical ideas. HARDCOVER.
Download or read book My Life with the Great Pianists written by Franz Mohr and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 1996-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mohr's humor and personal perspective on the lives of Rubinstein, Horowitz, and other artists mix music lore with quiet faith.
Download or read book Instrumental written by James Rhodes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An intense, eloquent, and appropriately furious memoir with the transporting beauty of classical music . . . The cumulative effect of the literary concert [Rhodes] gives in these pages is transcendence, both for him and for the reader." --Los Angeles Review of Books “A mesmeric combination of vivid, keen, obsessive precision and raw, urgent energy.” --Zoe Williams, The Guardian James Rhodes's passion for music has been his lifeline--the thread that has held through a life encompassing abuse and turmoil. But whether listening to Rachmaninov on a loop as a traumatized teenager or discovering a Bach adagio while in a hospital ward, he survived his demons by encounters with musical miracles. These--along with a chance encounter with a stranger--inspired him to become the renowned concert pianist he is today. Instrumental is a memoir like no other: unapologetically candid, boldly outspoken, and surprisingly funny--shot through with a mordant wit, even in its darkest moments. A feature film adaptation of Rhodes's incredible story is now in development from Monumental Pictures and BBC Films, following a competitive bidding war involving major U.S. and U.K. companies. An impassioned tribute to the therapeutic powers of music, Instrumental also weaves in fascinating facts about how classical music actually works and about the extraordinary lives of some of the great composers. It explains why and how music has the potential to transform all of our lives.
Download or read book Every Good Boy Does Fine A Love Story in Music Lessons written by Jeremy Denk and published by Picador. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A uniquely illuminating memoir of the making of a musician, in which renowned pianist Jeremy Denk explores what he learned from his teachers about classical music: its forms, its power, its meaning - and what it can teach us about ourselves. In this searching and funny memoir, based on his popular New Yorker article, renowned pianist Jeremy Denk traces an implausible journey. Life is difficult enough as a precocious, temperamental, and insufferable six-year-old piano prodigy in New Jersey. But then a family meltdown forces a move to New Mexico, far from classical music’s nerve centers, and he has to please a new taskmaster while navigating cacti, and the perils of junior high school. Escaping from New Mexico at last, he meets a bewildering cast of college music teachers, ranging from boring to profound, and experiences a series of humiliations and triumphs, to find his way as one of the world’s greatest living pianists, a MacArthur 'Genius,' and a frequent performer at Carnegie Hall. There are few writers working today who are willing to eloquently explore both the joys and miseries of artistic practice. Hours of daily repetition, mystifying early advice, pressure from parents and teachers who drove him on – an ongoing battle of talent against two enemies: boredom and insecurity. As we meet various teachers, with cruel and kind streaks, Denk composes a fraught love letter to the act of teaching. He brings you behind the scenes, to look at what motivates both student and teacher, locked in a complicated and psychologically perilous relationship. In Every Good Boy Does Fine, Denk explores how classical music is relevant to 'real life,' despite its distance in time. He dives into pieces and composers that have shaped him – Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms, among others – and gives unusual lessons on melody, harmony, and rhythm. Why and how do these fundamental elements have such a visceral effect on us? He tries to sum up many of the lessons he has received, to repay the debt of all his amazing teachers; to remind us that music is our creation, and that we need to keep asking questions about its purpose.
Download or read book Piano Lessons written by Noah Adams and published by Delta. This book was released on 1997-03-10 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Piano Lessons is Noah Adams's delightful and moving chronicle of his fifty-second year--a year already filled with long, fast workdays and too little spare time--as he answers at last a lifelong call: to learn to play the piano. The twelve monthly chapters span from January--when after decades of growing affection for keyboard artists and artisans he finally plunges in and buys a piano--through December, when as a surprise Christmas present for his wife he dresses in a tuxedo and, in flickering candlelight, snow falling outside the windows, he attempts their favorite piece of music, a difficult third-year composition he's been struggling with in secret to get to this very moment. Among the up-tempo triumphs and unexpected setbacks, Noah Adams interweaves the rich history and folklore that surround the piano. And along the way, set between the ragtime rhythms and boogie-woogie beats, there are encounters with--and insights from--masters of the keyboard, from Glenn Gould and Leon Fleisher ("I was a bit embarrassed," he writes; "telling Leon Fleisher about my ambitions for piano lessons is like telling Julia Child about plans to make toast in the morning") to Dr. John and Tori Amos. As a storyteller, Noah Adams has perfect pitch. In the foreground here, like a familiar melody, are the challenges of learning a complex new skill as an adult, when enthusiasm meets the necessary repetition of tedious scales at the end of a twelve-hour workday. Lingering in the background, like a subtle bass line, are the quiet concerns of how we spend our time and how our priorities shift as we proceed through life. For Piano Lessons is really an adventure story filled with obstacles to overcome and grand leaps forward, eccentric geniuses and quiet moments of pre-dawn practice, as Noah Adams travels across country and keyboard, pursuing his dream and keeping the rhythm.
Download or read book The Pianist from Syria written by Aeham Ahmad and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An astonishing yet true account of a pianist's life in war-torn Syria and his ultimate escape to Germany offers a deeply personal perspective on the most devastating refugee crisis of this century. Aeham Ahmad was born a second-generation refugee--the son of a blind violinist and carpenter who recognized Aeham's talent and taught him how to play piano and love music from an early age. When his grandparents and father were forced to flee Israel and seek refuge from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 1948, Aeham's family built a life in Yarmouk, an unofficial refugee camp to more than 160,000 Palestinians in Damascus. While waiting for the conflict to be resolved so that they could return to their homeland, they raised a new generation in Syria. But another fight overtook their asylum. Their only havens were in music and each other. In his escape from Syria, Aeham sought out a safe place for him and his family to call home and build a better future. Heart-wrenching though full of hope, and told in a raw and poignant voice, The Pianist from Syria is a gripping portrait of one man's search for a peaceful life and of a country being torn apart as the world watches in horror."--Jacket.
Download or read book Music Study in Germany written by Amy Fay and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2014-05-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famous letters by a young American pianist, dating from 1869 to 1875, uniquely describe study with Liszt, Tausig, and other luminaries. Fay offers firsthand impressions of performances by Rubinstein, Clara Schumann, Wagner (as conductor), Joachim, and many others.
Download or read book The Weight of a Piano written by Chris Cander and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: USA TODAY BESTSELLER In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, on which she discovers an enrichening passion for music. Yet after she marries, her husband insists the family emigrate to America—and loses her piano in the process. In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy is burdened by the last gift her father gave her before he and her mother died in a terrible house fire: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Now a talented and independent auto mechanic, Clara’s career is put on hold when she breaks her hand trying to move the piano, and in sudden frustration she decides to sell it. Only in discovering the identity of the buyer—and the secret history of her piano—will Clara be set free to live the life of her choosing.
Download or read book Piano Girl Playbook written by Robin Meloy Goldsby and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-06-18 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pianist in lounges and lobbies around the world, Robin Meloy Goldsby tells her warm-hearted stories by linking people she has met with places she has played. Along the way, she connects the humanity of her audiences—princes and paupers, dreamers and doers, moguls, mobsters, wanna-bes, and has-beens—with the quiet soundtrack of her peripatetic, melodic life. Goldsby's autobiographical stories and essays deliver insights into the art and craft of piano playing, the merits of live music, and how the right song at the right moment can add color and depth to a drab, one dimensional world. Music, it turns out, connects us in unpredictable ways.
Download or read book Counterpoint A Memoir of Bach and Mourning written by Philip Kennicott and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Pulitzer Prize–winning critic’s “lyrical and haunting” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) reflection on the meaning and emotional impact of a Bach masterwork. As his mother was dying, Philip Kennicott began to listen to the music of Bach obsessively. It was the only music that didn’t seem trivial or irrelevant, and it enabled him to both experience her death and remove himself from it. For him, Bach’s music held the elements of both joy and despair, life and its inevitable end. He spent the next five years trying to learn one of the composer’s greatest keyboard masterpieces, the Goldberg Variations. In Counterpoint, he recounts his efforts to rise to the challenge, and to fight through his grief by coming to terms with his memories of a difficult, complicated childhood. He describes the joys of mastering some of the piano pieces, the frustrations that plague his understanding of others, the technical challenges they pose, and the surpassing beauty of the melodies, harmonies, and counterpoint that distinguish them. While exploring Bach’s compositions he sketches a cultural history of playing the piano in the twentieth century. And he raises two questions that become increasingly interrelated, not unlike a contrapuntal passage in one of the variations itself: What does it mean to know a piece of music? What does it mean to know another human being?
Download or read book The Secret Piano written by Xiao-Mei Zhu and published by AmazonCrossing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The autobiography of pianist Zhu Xiao-Mei.
