At a sunny table in Noe Valley, waiting to return someone's lost cell phone
Reading Empire, by Mitchell Pacelle.
Something good he read earlier this year -- A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano, by Katie Hafner. It's a biography about the famous Canadian concert pianist.
Unlike other musicians, it's very cumbersome for pianists to travel with their own instruments. The man was a perfectionist and was able to tell if the keyboard was too big....even if that difference was only an eighth of an inch. He stopped performing at the peak of his career.
Another good music book -- Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina, by David Hadjdu.
Can you recommend any good music books?
3 Comments:
i like watching concert pianist videos on youtube. youtube is like a book, because they are both things
One of the best music books I've read (recently) is Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. The writing from Nick's point of view, being on stage, being a part of the music, is incredibly engaging.
There are two, and, of course, I won't remember the names.
One I've written on here about life in Burma in the 1800s, I think. A piano tuner traveled to the remote area to fix one.
The other starts in a room where a boy is left alone quite often because his mother is working...and maybe drinking. He, can't remember how, is able to take piano lessons and ends up .... well, a great book.
A middle school level one is Bud, Not Buddy set in the 1930s. In it a boy is looking for his past and it is tied to jazz music.
Another is The Mozart Season about a girl and her violin.
There is a final one about the 1920s renaissance, but I'm not even close to pulling it out of my head--a boy in an orphanage who escapes and ends up at parties of the age.
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