You can teach yourself to play the cello. This comprehensive, authoritative guide covers basics to Bach. Including 116 selections, it explains reading music, playing-by-ear and theory. Play-along CD.

Eminent composer discusses music, culture, and the environment.

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK! • Ray McMillian is a Black classical musician on the rise—undeterred by the pressure and prejudice of the classical music world—when a shocking theft sends him on a desperate quest to recover his great-great-grandfather’s heirloom violin on the eve of the most prestigious musical competition in the world. “I loved The Violin Conspiracy for exactly the same reasons I loved The Queen’s Gambit: a surprising, beautifully rendered underdog hero I cared about deeply and a fascinating, cutthroat world I knew nothing about—in this case, classical music.” —Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and Hour of the Witch Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. But Ray has a gift and a dream—he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism inherent in the world of classical music. When he discovers that his beat-up, family fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach, and together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Without it, Ray feels like he's lost a piece of himself. As the competition approaches, Ray must not only reclaim his precious violin, but prove to himself—and the world—that no matter the outcome, there has always been a truly great musician within him.

A revelatory account of the life of beloved American music icon, Paul Simon, by the bestselling rock biographer Peter Ames Carlin To have been alive during the last sixty years is to have lived with the music of Paul Simon. The boy from Queens scored his first hit record in 1957, just months after Elvis Presley ignited the rock era. As the songwriting half of Simon & Garfunkel, his work helped define the youth movement of the '60s. On his own in the '70s, Simon made radio-dominating hits. He kicked off the '80s by reuniting with Garfunkel to perform for half a million New Yorkers in Central Park. Five years later, Simon’s album “Graceland” sold millions and spurred an international political controversy. And it doesn’t stop there. The grandchild of Jewish emigrants from Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian empire, the 75-year-old singer-songwriter has not only sold more than 100 million records, won 15 Grammy awards and been installed into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame twice, but has also animated the meaning—and flexibility—of personal and cultural identity in a rapidly shrinking world. Simon has also lived one of the most vibrant lives of modern times; a story replete with tales of Carrie Fisher, Leonard Bernstein, Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Shelley Duvall, Nelson Mandela, drugs, depression, marriage, divorce, and more. A life story with the scope and power of an epic novel, Carlin’s Homeward Bound is the first major biography of one of the most influential popular artists in American history.

As the 1960s ended, Herbie Hancock embarked on a grand creative experiment. Having just been dismissed from the celebrated Miles Davis Quintet, he set out on the road, playing with his first touring group as a leader until he eventually formed what would become a revolutionary band. Taking the Swahili name Mwandishi, the group would go on to play some of the most innovative music of the 1970s, fusing an assortment of musical genres, American and African cultures, and acoustic and electronic sounds into groundbreaking experiments that helped shape the American popular music that followed. In You’ll Know When You Get There, Bob Gluck offers the first comprehensive study of this influential group, mapping the musical, technological, political, and cultural changes that they not only lived in but also effected. Beginning with Hancock’s formative years as a sideman in bebop and hard bop ensembles, his work with Miles Davis, and the early recordings under his own name, Gluck uncovers the many ingredients that would come to form the Mwandishi sound. He offers an extensive series of interviews with Hancock and other band members, the producer and engineer who worked with them, and a catalog of well-known musicians who were profoundly influenced by the group. Paying close attention to the Mwandishi band’s repertoire, he analyzes a wide array of recordings—many little known—and examines the group’s instrumentation, their pioneering use of electronics, and their transformation of the studio into a compositional tool. From protofunk rhythms to synthesizers to the reclamation of African identities, Gluck tells the story of a highly peculiar and thrillingly unpredictable band that became a hallmark of American genius.

Published for the very first time, the top secret report Some Weaknesses in German Strategy and Organisation 1933 - 1945 was prepared by Whitehall's highest intelligence body, the Joint Intelligence Committee, and presented to Britain's Chiefs of Staff in 1946 to 'set down certain aspects of the War whilst there are still sources available who were closely connected with the events described'. Paul Winter sets this unique and important document in its historical setting, providing biographies of key figures referenced in the report and a timeline of the crucial events of the Second World War.

"To accompany the photographs, Ryerson recruited some of the most important names in music. These world-class artists, from twenty-two countries on five continents, and from across the musical spectrum, have contributed memoirs, stories, poetry, music, and lyrics for Water Music, reinforcing the beauty of the images and the powerful message they convey. Rhythmist Mickey Hart recalls how, as a boy, listening to the percussion of falling rain led to a musical transfiguration. For mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer, water is where she found her voice as a little girl, while singing in a culvert under Whiskey Run Creek. And from his mother's astrologer, Phish bassist Mike Gordon learned that water could be his "window to the cosmos.""--BOOK JACKET.

The 1990 journey of Matthiessen, Paul Winter and a group of Russian environmentalists who traveled around Siberia's Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest lake, containing one-fifth of the planet's fresh water, is chronicled in diary form. Norton's 50 color photos enhance the text. A portion of the royalties go to Baikal Watch. Map.

In Thousand Mile Song, musician and philosopher David Rothenberg uses the enigma of whale sounds to explore whether we can truly understand nonhuman minds. Interviewing scholars around the world as they attempt to decipher underwater music, Rothenberg tells the story of scientists and artists confronting an unknown as vast as the ocean. Along the way, he plays his clarinet live with whales in their native habitats, from Russia to Hawaii, making interspecies music that appears on the included CD. Richly detailed and deeply entertaining, Thousand Mile Song is an imaginative look at the most intriguing creatures of the ocean.

THE KINGDOM OF WINTER is book #1 in Sir Windham the North Wind's nature adventure series THE KINGDOMS OF THE SEASONS. Sir Windham, Earth's bravest and strongest Knight, rallies his Wind family members, nature's elements, Orion & the Constellations and savvy children around the world to restore Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. "Oh roar, Aurora Borealis! Shine your lights on Winter's palace! Earth and Stars at fever pitch Are joined against the Fire Witch! What forces now conspire to convince Skylar, Lily and Winter's Prince Their wit and courage are valiant arms As cunning as Orion's charms? Welcome to to magic day and night Inside the Kingdom of which I write: 'Tis Winter, Summer, Spring and Fall! We Seasons grant you entry all!" - Sir Windham the North Wind