My Music Man

As Dede Montgomery moves through grief to accept of the death of her father, the stories in My Music Man shed light on change, acceptance, and forgiveness amid close personal relationships and Oregon's natural landscapes. The reader is catapulted into autumn on the Willamette's riverbank in the 1960s with the author and her brothers, where they discover their father's own childhood stories and the intimate relationship he shares with the land. Tales about generations of family weave between time periods, held together by the constancy of place and colored by memories of picking berries and filberts, traveling through the West Linn locks, and swimming in the river on a hot summer day. Montgomery describes small-town life in a school where everyone knows everybody, and how it felt to be an only girl in what often felt like a never-ending sea of boys.

Chronicles the creation of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man—reprinted now as the Broadway Edition Composer Meredith Willson described The Music Man as “an Iowan’s attempt to pay tribute to his home state.” Now featuring a new foreword by noted singer and educator Michael Feinstein, this book presents Willson’s reflections on the ups and downs, surprises and disappointments, and finally successes of making one of America’s most popular musicals. Willson’s whimsical, personable writing style brings readers back in time with him to the 1950s to experience firsthand the exciting trials and tribulations of creating a Broadway masterpiece. Fresh admiration of the musical—and the man behind the music—is sure to result.

Rhyming, cumulative text adapted from a classic nursery song introduces six musical instruments, while glimpses through die-cut windows hint at who is playing each one.

A memoir by Mead Metcalf

This fantasy novel is about an epic adventure, where a young boy, named Jimmy, meets someone extraordinary, Cornelius, who shares the same love for music as him. Cornelius introduces Jimmy to the piano that's in his attic. And from there, they go on to a magical parallel universe. Enjoy this work of mystery, fantasy, adventure, and science fiction.Without further delay, Enjoy......The Music Man

Dan Barker, ex-preacher and co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, travels widely, arguing in debates and speaking on his beliefs that Christianity is false, God does not exist, and the Bible is filled with errors and mythology. He has been touted as one of America's leading atheists. Yet close examination of his arguments shows that Barker's reasons for disbelief are poorly reasoned and miss the mark as they are aimed at a mistaken caricature of Christian theism. Answering the Music Man exposes Barker's misunderstandings of Christianity and provides compelling answers to Barker's arguments.

And There I Stood with My Piccolo, originally published in 1948, is a zesty and colorful memoir of composer Meredith Willson’s early years—from growing up in Mason City, Iowa, to playing the flute with John Philip Sousa’s band and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, to a successful career in composing for radio and motion pictures in Hollywood. It was apparent to everyone, except maybe Willson himself, that he was on his way to something big. Lighthearted and inspiring, it is no surprise Willson’s tales caught the attention of prominent Broadway producers. In 1957, just nine years after the publication of this book, The Music Man became a Broadway sensation, winning five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Meredith Willson’s musical comedy is to this day arguably the most produced and beloved musical in American culture.

Emerging in the 1850s, elocutionists recited poetry or drama with music to create a new type of performance. The genre--dominated by women--achieved remarkable popularity. Yet the elocutionists and their art fell into total obscurity during the twentieth century. Marian Wilson Kimber restores elocution with music to its rightful place in performance history. Gazing through the lenses of gender and genre, Wilson Kimber argues that these female artists transgressed the previous boundaries between private and public domains. Their performances advocated for female agency while also contributing to a new social construction of gender. Elocutionists, proud purveyors of wholesome entertainment, pointedly contrasted their "acceptable" feminine attributes against those of morally suspect actresses. As Wilson Kimber shows, their influence far outlived their heyday. Women, the primary composers of melodramatic compositions, did nothing less than create a tradition that helped shape the history of American music.