Pieces For The Left Hand

Finally available in the United States, a singular story collection that Time Out declared "unsettlingly brilliant" Astudent's suicide note is not what it seems. A high school football rivalry turns absurd—and deadly. A much-loved cat seems to have been a different animal all along. A pair of identical twins aren't identical at all—or even related. A man finds his own yellowed birth announcement inside a bureau bought at auction. Set in a small upstate New York town, told in a conversational style, Pieces for the Left Hand is a stream of a hundred anecdotes, none much longer than a page. At once funny, bizarre, familiar, and disturbing, these deceptively straightforward tales nevertheless shock and amaze through uncanny coincidence, tragic misunderstanding, strange occurrence, or sudden insight. Unposted letters, unexpected visitors, false memories—in J. Robert Lennon's vision of America, these are the things that decide our fate. Wry and deadpan, powerful and philosophical, these addictive little tales reveal the everyday world as a strange and eerie place.

A collection of 100 short pieces-- some not even a page long-- full of subtle humor and surprising incidents. They are grouped into seven themes.

"Bravo to Edel on his excellent presentation of the subject! . . . highly recommended . . . " —ARBA 96 ". . . filled with information for pianists with injured hands and for players and teachers seeking unusual repertoire or ways of developing left-hand technique." —Clavier "Thanks to Edel for cataloging this largely unknown area of piano repertoire and to Indiana University Press for publishing this most welcomed book." —American Music Teacher A descriptive catalog of solos, chamber works, and concertos with piano parts written for one hand, including nearly 1,000 solo compositions for the left hand. Publication data, length, level of difficulty, style, and often brief biographical information about the composer are provided for each piece.

Covering a span of time and styles ranging from jazz beginnings to some of the most recent developments, this book collects and analyzes many of the most frequently used jazz, blues, and Latin jazz left-hand piano techniques. Generally, each proposed technique is first introduced by a "model" figure derived from original sources, followed by an explanation of its pattern, and finally by some sample applications using well-known songs, harmonic progressions, or original pieces. For the sake of completeness, most of these left-hand applications are integrated with sample right-hand parts that validate the efficacy and concrete application of the left hand figures. Numerous styles of jazz piano are taught, including: stride piano, Latin stylings, blues, boogie, swing, walking bass, jazz waltz, rootless voicings and many other concepts. Characteristics of jazz legends including Erroll Garner, Jelly Roll Morton, Earl Hines, George Gershwin, Fats Waller, Eubie Blake and many others are explored. As with all books in this series, it includes a unique lay-flat binding to help keep the music open on the music stand.

Broken finger? Broken arm? Sprained wrist? Need extra technic for either right or left hand? Here is the perfect answer for all of these situations. Each piece focuses on a specific musical concept with patterns and repetitions that make them easy to memorize. Great sight reading material for more advanced students. Federation Festivals 2011-2013 selection.

The first substantial collection of short fiction from "a writer with enough electricity to light up the country" (Ann Patchett) "I guess the things that scare you are the things that are almost normal," observes one narrator in this collection of effervescent and often uncanny stories. Drawing on fifteen years of work, See You in Paradise is the fullest expression yet of J. Robert Lennon's distinctive and brilliantly comic take on the pathos and surreality at the heart of American life. In Lennon's America, a portal to another universe can be discovered with surprising nonchalance in a suburban backyard, adoption almost reaches the level of blood sport, and old pals return from the dead to steal your girlfriend. Sexual dysfunction, suicide, tragic accidents, and career stagnation all create surprising opportunities for unexpected grace in this full-hearted and mischievous depiction of those days (weeks, months, years) we all have when things just don't go quite right.

The most inventive and entertaining novel to date from “a master of the dark arts” (Kelly Link) A modest house in upstate New York. One in the morning. Three people—a couple and their child—hurry out the door, but it’s too late for them. As the virtuosic and terrifying opening scene of Broken River unfolds, a spectral presence seems to be watching with cold and mysterious interest. Soon the house lies abandoned, and years later a new family moves in. Karl, Eleanor, and their daughter, Irina, arrive from New York City in the wake of Karl’s infidelity to start anew. Karl tries to stabilize his flailing art career. Eleanor, a successful commercial novelist, eagerly pivots in a new creative direction. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Irina becomes obsessed with the brutal murders that occurred in the house years earlier. And, secretly, so does her mother. As the ensemble cast grows to include Louis, a hapless salesman in a carpet warehouse who is haunted by his past, and Sam, a young woman newly reunited with her jailbird brother, the seemingly unrelated crime that opened the story becomes ominously relevant. Hovering over all this activity looms a gradually awakening narrative consciousness that watches these characters lie to themselves and each other, unleashing forces that none of them could have anticipated and that put them in mortal danger. Broken River is a cinematic, darkly comic, and sui generis psychological thriller that could only have been written by J. Robert Lennon.

Instructional book for advanced jazz pianists