This expressive vocal solo is a hymn of trust, asking God's guidance through all of life's journeys. This tender selection works equally well with piano accompaniment or the lushly orchestrated accompaniment CD.

"Whether on the mountain's height or the valley's deepest maze, I place my trust in You. Lord, lead me in your ways." This expressive original Lloyd Larson anthem is a hymn of trust, asking for God's guidance through all of life's journeys. Perfect for use throughout the year, this tender selection is enhanced by a skillfully crafted optional orchestration.

Solo Practice is an unsettling book, distinguished but disturbing, a dark novel of possession, obsession and the corruption of love. It considers the limits of friendship and the definitions of family, exploring the porous boundaries that separate parent from child, brother from sister, friend from lover. A finely crafted, compelling study of the nature of twinship, it celebrates the commonality of soul, while also mining the depths of the unspeakable heart. That is to say, this novel examines the nature of love. In luminous prose these stories follow the lives of four young people, flawed and damaged from the start, chronicling their efforts to help themselves and each other achieve the passage to adulthood. Not all survive the journey, and those who do arrive at places their dreams never imagined. Ultimately, Solo Practice is a book about the nature of hope and healing, and the limits of both. Like Raymond Carver, Philip Russell makes us reconsider the meanings of redemption and salvation.

" For the first time in decades, Lorraine Kindred has returned to the ballroom where she was swept away by the big bands during the 1940s--and by a star-crossed romance. As she takes in the magnificent energy and brassy sounds of her youth, the past comes to life, along with the fateful decision all those years ago that forced her to choose between personal conviction and social expectation, between the two men who had captured her heart. It had been a time of great music and love, but also of war and sacrifice, and now, trying to make peace with her memories, Lorraine must find the courage to face buried secrets. In the process, she will rediscover herself, her passion, and her capacity for resilience. Set during the 1940s and the present and inspired by a real-life ballroom, Stars Over Clear Lake is a moving story of forbidden love, lost love, everlasting love--and self love. "--

At the turn of the twentieth century Italian opera participated to the making of a modern spectator. The Ricordi stage manuals testify to the need to harness the effects of operatic performance, activating opera's capacity to cultivate a public. This book considers how four operas and one film deal with their public: one that in Boito's Mefistofele is entertained by special effects, or that in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra is called upon as a political body to confront the specters of history. Also a public that in Verdi's Otello is subjected to the manipulation of contemporary acting, or one that in Puccini's Manon Lescaut is urged to question the mechanism of spectatorship. Lastly, the silent film Rapsodia satanica, thanks to the craft and prestige of Pietro Mascagni's score, attempts to transform the new industrial medium into art, addressing its public's search for a bourgeois pan-European cultural identity, right at the outset of the First World War.

The music of the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in recent years. Despite wide recognition in his own lifetime, Szymanowski‘s works were somewhat overlooked in the decades following his death. Outside Poland, changing fashions militated against acceptance of his achievement, and subsequent generations of Polish composers regarded his music as too reactionary to provide a basis on which to found a national musical identity. In this full-scale study of Karol Szymanowski‘s life and music, Alistair Wightman explores the composer‘s position as a constant outsider in his own country, yet agood European in the ways in which he responded positively to a diverse range of musical talents, in particular as Stravinsky, Strauss, Berg, Hindemith, Prokofiev and Ravel. The book throws light on Szymanowski‘s relationship to the Polish musical establishment, the reception of his works at home and abroad, his work as an educationalist, and the essentially European dimension of his art, drawing on letters, polemical writings, verse, theatrical sketches and the memoirs of family, friends and contemporaries. All of Szymanowski‘s significant works are discussed, illustrated with nearly 140 music examples. Evaluation is made of the close links existing between the composer‘s musical and literary works from the earliest stages of his career, as well as the various ideological strands that went together to form the unique, humanistic synthesis, characteristic of his mature work.

Acclaimed author Karen Hesse's Newbery Medal-winning novel-in-verse explores the life of fourteen-year-old Billie Jo growing up in the dust bowls of Oklahoma. Out of the Dust joins the Scholastic Gold line, which features award-winning and beloved novels. Includes exclusive bonus content!"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. . . ."A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands.To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. While others flee from the dust bowl, Billie Jo is left to find peace in the bleak landscape of Oklahoma -- and in the surprising landscape of her own heart.

A complete step-by-step guide, Secrets of Singing provides everything needed to gain technical and musical vocal mastery. Some of the highlights include: basic principles of singing, mastery of the upper voice, achieving the power of an open throat, and phrasing and diction on a professional level. The package contains two CDs (one for high voice and one for low voice) and an almost 400-page information-packed book.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.