Author: Isabel Rogers Publisher: Prelude Books ISBN: 1788421108 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
Classical music can be a dangerous pastime... What with love affairs, their conductor dropping dead, a stolen cello and no money, Stockwell Park Orchestra is having a fraught season. After Mrs Ford-Hughes is squashed and injured by a dying guest conductor mid-concert, she and her husband withdraw their generous financial backing, leaving the orchestra broke and unsure of its future. Cellist Erin suggests a recovery plan, but since it involves their unreliable leader, Fenella, playing a priceless Stradivari cello which then goes missing, it’s not a fool-proof one. Joshua, the regular conductor, can’t decide which affair to commit to, while manager David’s nervous tic returns at every doom-laden report from the orchestra’s treasurer. There is one way to survive, but is letting a tone-deaf diva sing Strauss too high a price to pay? And will Stockwell Park Orchestra live to play another season? What people are saying about Life, Death and Cellos: “I was charmed... a very enjoyable read.” Marian Keyes “Life, Death and Cellos is a witty and irreverent musical romp, full of characters I’d love to go for a pint with. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the Stockwell Park Orchestra and can't wait for the next book in the series.” Claire King, author of The Night Rainbow “Life, Death and Cellos is that rare thing – a funny music book. Rogers knows the world intimately, and portrays it with warmth, accuracy and a poetic turn of phrase. Sharp, witty and richly entertaining.” Lev Parikian, author of Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? “With its retro humour bordering on farce, this novel offers an escape into the turbulent (and bonkers) world of the orchestra.” Isabel Costello, author of Paris Mon Amour “Dodgy post-rehearsal curries, friendly insults between musicians, sacrosanct coffee-and-biscuit breaks, tedious committee meetings: welcome to the world of the amateur orchestra. Throw in a stolen Stradivarius, an unexpected fatality and the odd illicit affair and you have Life, Death and Cellos, the first in a new series by Isabel Rogers.” Rebecca Franks, BBC Music Magazine “...a very funny tale of musical shenanigans set in the febrile atmosphere of the Stockwell Park Orchestra” Ian Critchley
Author: Carlos Prieto Publisher: University of Texas Press ISBN: 1477317864 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
A delightful biography of a celebrated Stradivarius cello and an inviting overview of cello music and its preeminent composers and performers by world-famous concert cellist Carlos Prieto.
Author: Kate Kennedy Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1803287012 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
'Just as a cello's voice is divided across four strings, each with its own colour and character, this is a journey in four parts, in search of four players and their instruments...' In Cello, Kate Kennedy weaves together the lives of four remarkable cellists who suffered various forms of persecution, injury and misfortune. The Hungarian Jewish cellist and composer Pál Hermann managed to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo for much of the Second World War but was eventually captured and murdered. Lise Cristiani, the first female professional cello soloist, undertook an epic – and ultimately fatal – concert tour of Siberia in the 1850s, taking with her one of the world's greatest Stradivari cellos. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was incarcerated in both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen camps, only surviving because she was the cellist in the Auschwitz-Birkenau women's orchestra. Amedeo Baldovino of the Trieste Piano Trio was forced to jump from a burning ship with his 'Mara' Stradivari, losing the cello, and nearly losing his own life when the boat was shipwrecked near Buenos Aires. Counterpointing the themes raised by these extraordinary stories are a sequence of interludes that draw together the author's reflections on the nature and history of the cello, and her many interviews and encounters with contemporary cellists. Kate Kennedy's own relationship with the cello is a complicated one. As a teenager, she suffered an injury to her arm that imposed severe limitations on her career as a performer on the instrument that was her first love. She realised that, in order to start to understand what the cello meant to her, she needed to find out what the cello – and, crucially, the absence of the cello – had meant to some other cellists, past and present. Kate Kennedy has written an eloquent and multitextured homage to this warmest of stringed instruments – part quest narrative, part detective story, part philosophical meditation.
Author: Jeff Porter Publisher: Akashic Books ISBN: 1617758698 Category : Family & Relationships Languages : en Pages : 165
Book Description
The second installment in Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint challenges the traditional solemnity that characterizes nonfiction books of grief, loss, and sorrow. “Few readers will fail to be gripped by this tragically common story about death and what comes after for those left behind . . . A haunting and thought-provoking consideration of death and ‘how utterly it rips apart our lives.'” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review Planet Claire is the story of the untimely death of the author’s wife and his candid account of the following year of madness and grief. As his life unravels, Porter analyzes his sadness with growing interest. He talks to Claire as if to evoke a presence, to mark a space for memory. He reports on his daily walks and shares observations of life’s sadness, while reminiscing about various moments in their life together. Like Orpheus, the author searches for a lost love, and what he finds is not the dog of doom but flashes of an intimate symmetry that brighten the darkest places of sorrow. The second title from Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint, Planet Claire takes readers on a journey of sorrow that recalls memorable works by C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed), Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking), and Julian Barnes (Levels of Life). Porter’s memoir, however, is also playful, quirky, and self-ironic in a way that challenges the genre’s traditional solemnity. Like the novel Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, this is an unpredictably funny account of heartbreak, as if to say there’s something about the magnitude of loss that troubles even earnestness.
Author: Michele Roper Publisher: Michele Roper ISBN: Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 298
Book Description
My name is Zoe Linn, and I must travel to the Realm of Faery to save my parents. Faery is not found on a map. It's magical. Somewhere out there. . . And, I'm not alone. I have my best friend, Rowan, my stuck-up cousin, Abby, and a talking horse with an attitude. Not my idea to bring him along. Together, we must stop the Pied Piper. Yeah. I thought he was a fictional character, too. No, he's real. One thing the story got right is that he controls rats. Big rats. I hate rats, especially ones with big teeth. Come along on our journey to the Realm of Faery.
Author: Georgia March Publisher: Trafford Publishing ISBN: 1426930569 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 686
Book Description
As the reader experiences Georgia March's magical The Cat, the Belly Dancer, & the Cello set at the beginning of twentieth-century Turkey, they will discover not everything is as it seems. Each chapter is a frozen snapshot covering another, waiting to be torn away. Unexpected danger ensnares two belly dancers from Istanbul who tackle it with lighthearted ease until their efforts are met with sinister results. Forced under someone else's microscope, the women come up against aspects of their own characters that bear examination. At the same time, a Canadian woman and her British boyfriend living in Spain venture through the centre of Turkey experiencing calamity and chaos in a country where both the language and customs bring new insight to the word foreign. Their personal backgrounds are also contrary to each other, meaning nothing is straight forward. This winding road leads them to Kas, a spellbinding place that captures their hearts and pocket books. Their lives become intricately intertwined with local Turks and they have the choice of learning to laugh at themselves or others will do it for them. At the same time, enjoy the anecdote of two cats with their own history, ideas on justice, and view of the world.
Author: James Riordan Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780192719133 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 148
Book Description
Tom feels out of place. He's attracted to boys, not girls, and he's a promising cellist, which the school bullies see as a reason to pick on him. The story follows him through his adolescence, as he becomes more aware of his sexuality, and more commited to his music. This is set against the background of a rising tide of hysteria on Tom's estate and a witchhunt against suspected paedophiles. Through it all, Tom moves towards a satisfying resolution.
Author: John Symons Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn ISBN: 0856833908 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 131
Book Description
The lives of three families are vividly chronicled in this novel that details 40 years during the Cold War and its aftermath. The experiences of each family—one British, one Hungarian, and one Russian—reflect the brutality, danger, bravery, heartbreak, hope, and disappointment during the days when the world was divided by the Iron Curtain. The book builds on confidential Communist Party documents released by President Yeltsin to Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky and the author’s numerous conversations with real people who were persecuted or imprisoned by the Gestapo or KGB. It is an account that skillfully portrays how the children, as they grew up, and their families in their respective countries were affected by world events—including the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Solidarity movement in Poland in the early 1980s, and the end of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991.
Author: Isabel Rogers
Author: Carlos Prieto
Author: Kate Kennedy
Author: Jeff Porter
Author: Marion Dickinson
Author: Michele Roper 
Author: Georgia March
Author: James Riordan
Author: John Symons
Author: Boston Symphony Orchestra