Global Perspectives on Orchestras offers innovative approaches to thinking about orchestras. It adopts ethnographic and comparative perspectives on symphony, Caribbean steel, Indian film orchestras and Indonesian gamelan ensembles. By considering the orchestra in diverse historical, intercultural and postcolonial contexts, the volume generates enhanced appreciation of this creative, political and social practice.

The two volumes of The Oxford Handbook of Music Education offer a comprehensive overview of the many facets of musical experience, behavior and development in relation to the diverse variety of educational contexts in which they occur. In these volumes, an international list of contributors update and redefine the discipline through fresh and innovative principles and approaches to music learning and teaching.

How did a late-blooming midwestern orchestra rise amid gritty Big Industry to become a titan in the world of Big Art? This groundbreaking book tells the complete story of the people and events that shaped the Cleveland Orchestra into a classical music legend. It taps the most authoritative sources to show how decisions were made along the often bumpy road to artistic and financial success. Told with plenty of anecdotes and intriguing behind-the-scenes details.

Creative practice in music, particularly in traditional concert culture, is commonly understood in terms of a rather stark division of labour between composer and performer. But this overlooks the distributed and interactive nature of the creative processes on which so much contemporary music depends. The incorporation of two features-improvisation and collaboration-into much contemporary music suggests that the received view of the relationship between composition and performance requires reassessment. Improvisation and collaborative working practices blur the composition/performance divide and, in doing so, provide important new perspectives on the forms of distributed creativity that play a central part in much contemporary music. Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music explores the different ways in which collaboration and improvisation enable and constrain creative processes. Thirteen chapters and twelve shorter Interventions offer a range of perspectives on distributed creativity in music, on composer/performer collaborations and on contemporary improvisation practices. The chapters provide substantial discussions of a variety of conceptual frameworks and particular projects, while the Interventions present more informal contributions from a variety of practitioners (performers, composers, improvisers), giving insights into the pleasures and perils of working creatively in collaborative and improvised ways.

An eye-opening view of the unprecedented global spread of El Sistema—intensive music education that disrupts the cycles of poverty. In some of the bleakest corners of the world, an unprecedented movement is taking root. From the favelas of Brazil to the Maori villages in New Zealand, from occupied Palestine to South Central Los Angeles, musicians with strong social consciences are founding intensive orchestra programs for children in need. In this captivating and inspiring account, authors Tricia Tunstall and Eric Booth tell the remarkable story of the international El Sistema movement. A program that started over four decades ago with a handful of music students in a parking garage in Caracas, El Sistema has evolved into one of classical music’s most vibrant new expressions and one of the world’s most promising social initiatives. Now with more than 700,000 students in Venezuela, El Sistema’s central message—that music can be a powerful tool for social change—has burst borders to grow in 64 countries (and that number increases steadily) across the globe. To discover what makes this movement successful across the radically different cultures that have embraced it, the authors traveled to 25 countries, where they discovered programs thriving even in communities ravaged by poverty, violence, or political unrest. At the heart of each program is a deep commitment to inclusivity. There are no auditions or entry costs, so El Sistema’s doors are open to any child who wants to learn music—or simply needs a place to belong. While intensive music-making may seem an unlikely solution to intractable poverty, this book bears witness to a program that is producing tangible changes in the lives of children and their communities. The authors conclude with a compelling and practicable call to action, highlighting civic and corporate collaborations that have proven successful in communities around the world.

This book is based on a series of informative interviews with a number of music librarians working for different leading symphony orchestras and opera companies throughout the world. In these interviews, librarians share with the readers what kind of professional skills, knowledge and personality that are required to supply music to the performers onstage, as well as information to these world-famous performing arts organizations. Interviewees also discuss in details about their professional lives, i.e., including their personal stories and working relationships with various legendary conductors and star soloists, e.g., Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, James Levine, Donald Runnicles, Bernard Haitink, Zubin Mehta, Sir Colin Davis, etc. Via the interviewees’ stories, one can also get a glimpse of the different inside operations and the unique management styles behind the backstage of these internationally renowned performing arts organizations. There are fourteen conversations including interviews with the Chief Librarian at the Metropolitan Opera and the Orchestra Librarians at the San Francisco Ballet, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

"Real Men Don't Rehearse" is a laugh-out-loud inside look at the usually hidden and secret world of professional orchestras. It is filled with dozens of humorous tales of musician antics and concert meltdowns. This is not just for musicians! With over a thousand copies sold, it has proven to be an enormous hit with general readers ages teen and up. Now in its fifth printing (a self-publishing miracle), the title and cover design make it top seller in bookstores, as everyone has a hard-to-shop-for relative with an interest in music. "Real Men Don't Rehearse" was written by Justin Locke, who spent 18 seasons as a professional freelance double bassist in Boston. He played with the Boston Symphony and the Boston Pops, as well as for ballets, operas, and Broadway shows. He is also well known in the symphonic world as the author of "Peter VS. the Wolf" and "The Phantom of the Orchestra," which are internationally acclaimed programs for orchestra family concerts. This book has been reviewed and excerpted in many international magazines, and is a book no musical library should be without.

The memoir that inspired the two-time Golden Globe Award–winning comedy series: “Funny . . . heartbreaking . . . [and] utterly absorbing” (Lee Smith, New York Times–bestselling author of Guests on Earth). Oboist Blair Tindall recounts her decades-long professional career as a classical musician—from the recitals and Broadway orchestra performances to the secret life of musicians who survive hand to mouth in the backbiting New York classical music scene, where musicians trade sexual favors for plum jobs and assignments in orchestras across the city. Tindall and her fellow journeymen musicians often play drunk, high, or hopelessly hungover, live in decrepit apartments, and perform in hazardous conditions—working-class musicians who schlep across the city between low-paying gigs, without health-care benefits or retirement plans, a stark contrast to the rarefied experiences of overpaid classical musician superstars. An incisive, no-holds-barred account, Mozart in the Jungle is the first true, behind-the-scenes look at what goes on backstage and in the orchestra pit. The book that inspired the Amazon Original series starring Gael García Bernal and Lola Kirke, this is “a fresh, highly readable and caustic perspective on an overglamorized world” (Publishers Weekly).

A deeply personal, intimate conversation about music and writing between the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author and the former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In Absolutely on Music, internationally Haruki Murakami sits down with his friend Seiji Ozawa, the revered former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, for a series of conversations on their shared passion: music. Over the course of two years, Murakami and Ozawa discuss everything from Brahms to Beethoven, from Leonard Bernstein to Glenn Gould, from Bartók to Mahler, and from pop-up orchestras to opera. They listen to and dissect recordings of some of their favorite performances, and Murakami questions Ozawa about his career conducting orchestras around the world. Culminating in Murakami’s ten-day visit to the banks of Lake Geneva to observe Ozawa’s retreat for young musicians, the book is interspersed with ruminations on record collecting, jazz clubs, orchestra halls, film scores, and much more. A deep reflection on the essential nature of both music and writing, Absolutely on Music is an unprecedented glimpse into the minds of two maestros.

How are our ability and motivation to be creative shaped by the world around us? Becoming Creative compares experiences of classical, jazz, and traditional musicians in South Africa, Finland, and the US to reveal how beliefs, learning methods, relationships, institutions, and inequalities enable or inhibit the development of creativity.