A concise, positive, practical and highly recommended source of advice and solace for anyone guiding a young musician’s life.
Almost everything a parent needs to know about the challenges and rewards of children’s music lessons.
Nathan (Round and Round Together, 2012, etc.) offers the flip side of her 2008 book, The Young Musician’s Survival Guide, and looks at parents’ experiences with their children’s music study, including its delights, dilemmas, expenses and intangibles. Inspired by her own experience but primarily drawing from interviews with other parents, she offers 12 chapters, each carefully labeled so that harried readers can turn directly to the most pertinent information. Every parent who pays for music instruction, ferries children to lessons, provides instruments and listens to his or her kid practicing exercises asks similar questions: Which instrument? Is there life after lessons? Can they make a living at it? Parents of now-famous musicians reveal in interviews that there’s no one right way to begin, or even know to begin, a child’s musical career. Shirley Bell, the mother of world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell, discovered her son’s talent when the 2-year-old created his own musical instrument from rubber bands and drawer knobs, but she says that she “never anticipated that it would be a career.” Other parents share effective, sometimes indirect ways to encourage practicing in two useful sections. One chapter is devoted to finding a teacher and offers wise tips: Attend kids’ concerts and check nearby colleges, local orchestras and summer programs. The interviewees’ consensus is, unsurprisingly, that it’s all worth it, even if children don’t turn into professional musicians; it gives them a lifelong source of delight and, as parent Theresa Chong affirms, it can forge “a close connection…through our shared passion for music.” There’s also a handy bibliography for further research, a source list and an index.
A concise, positive, practical and highly recommended source of advice and solace for anyone guiding a young musician’s life.Pub Date: June 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-0199837120
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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