Dream Singer

"Ms. Ferguson has written an un-put-downable book." --Romantic Times on Call Back Yesterday A world lost . . . "DREAM SINGER is full of adventure and plot twists . . ." --Paranormalromance.org First Daughter Nerienne, heir to the Tiria of Gayome, faces the destruction of everything she knows when her mother's enemies kill the Tiria. Nerienne is left with just her magic and with Bidge, a mysterious creature that speaks only to her. She is rescued by Durgan Ketassian, leader of the rebels in the northern woods, but can she trust this man whom her mother condemned to die? A dream found . . . Durgan knows he cannot trust Nerienne. Her mother had been his enemy ever since she began slaying dreamsingers, skilled musicians who sing the future through one's dreams. He has vowed to see his people free of the Tiria's domination, never guessing the Tiria's daughter could awaken parts of his heart he'd shut away. A song without end . . . To save Gayome, Nerienne and Durgan must work together to defeat their common enemy. But to become allies opens them to the greatest threat of all . . . falling in love. Award winning author J. A. Ferguson lives in Nevada with her husband, children, and a fat cat. She is not sure which is most spoiled.

In a future where music permeates the world, technology has advanced a concert system to a sophisticated level. Success lies in a singera??s ability to control the population by projecting emotion and subliminal ideas through song. Sects and groups have evolved into guilds that vie for leadership. The goal of a singer is to become an apprentice and represent a guild in the national concert system.From the moment Feiara takes the stage, shea??s in trouble. She is tormented by internal struggles as she faces concert sabotage, plots from competitors, and pursuit by an obsessed and unsavory fan. Mentally unbalanced and fighting for freedom, she must face her fears as she struggles to emerge the winner in the prestigious National singing competition. Although she thinks she knows who she is, a mystery in her past throws Feiara into an alliance with Saeron, the black sheep brother of her infatuated coach, Breen. Through her trials, Feiara is forced to come to grips with the forces driving her.

Psychologist Leslie Harper takes pity on Kitty Rose, a homeless street singer, and finds herself drawn into a world of old mystery and present danger. Temporarily separated from her husband until they can work out problems that negatively affect their asthmatic son, Leslie suddenly finds herself the target of her husband's wealthy family, whose powerful and unscrupulous lawyers set out to remove her from her son's life. Torn between helping the girl and fighting her own battles, Leslie takes on a challenge that could prove fatal to both of them.

The vast majority of singers with a degree in performance are un- or under-employed in their field. Despite the fact that talented singers are discovered every day, there are far too few jobs in the field of classical music to accommodate all of them, a problem evidenced by regular reports of opera companies and symphony orchestras closing their doors. Young classical singers, particularly recent graduates of music programs, need not only artistic ability, but also intelligence and an acute business sense to navigate the world of professional singing. In The 21st-Century Singer: Making the Leap from the University into the World , author Susan Mohini Kane has created a user-friendly guide for these recent graduates. Kane combines the benefits of an instructional manual with those of a self-reflective workbook to provide emerging classical singers with both practical and inspirational advice. She begins with a section on self-evaluation, allowing readers to define what motivates their desire to sing professionally and reflect on their passions, before moving on to career advice. In the sections that follow, Kane presents a variety of career paths, such as singing, teaching, and consulting-realistic alternatives to the rise to stardom as an "overnight sensation" that so few will experience-and provides the reader with the tools to develop a concrete plan for whichever path they decide to pursue. Other sections offer instruction on how to develop support systems, train oneself holistically, and take advantage of the newest technological resources available for professional self-promotion. With its dual emphasis on artistic motivation and modern-day business sense, The 21st-Century Singer will prove an essential text for anyone pursuing a professional singing career.

This book focuses on the rapidly changing sociology of music as manifested in Chinese society and Chinese education. It examines how social changes and cultural politics affect how music is currently being used in connection with the Chinese dream. While there is a growing trend toward incorporating the Chinese dream into school education and higher education, there has been no scholarly discussion to date. The combination of cultural politics, transformed authority relations, and officially approved songs can provide us with an understanding of the official content on the Chinese dream that is conveyed in today’s Chinese society, and how these factors have influenced the renewal of values-based education and practices in school music education in China.

Time Out of Mind is one of the most ambitious, complex, and provocative albums of Bob Dylan’s distinguished artistic career. The present book interprets the songs recorded for Time Out of Mind as a series of dreams by a single singer/dreamer. These dreams overlap and intermingle, but three primary levels of meaning emerge. On one level, the singer/dreamer envisions himself as a killer awaiting execution for killing his lover. On another level, the song-cycle functions as religious allegory, dramatizing the protagonist’s relentless struggles with his lover as a battle between spirit and flesh, earth and heaven, salvation and damnation. On still another level, Time Out of Mind is a meditation on American slavery and racism, Dylan’s most personal encounter with the subject, but one tangled up in associations with the minstrelsy tradition and debates surrounding cultural appropriation. Time Out of Mind marks the culmination of several recurring themes that have preoccupied Dylan for decades, and it serves as a pivotal turning point toward his late renaissance in terms of both subject matter and intertextual approach.