Substitute Soloist

This comprehensive study of harmony is a must for any musician interested in jazz. This book explains the essentials of jazz harmony in a friendly, easy-to-understand manner. A 12-key system is used to help you learn each concept in every key. Learn about rootless voicings, shell voicings, spread voicings, clusters, and how to select which voicings to use. Other topics include ii-V-I progressions, dominant chord cycles, Rhythm Changes," Giant Steps substitutions, thinking in modes, non-diatonic progressions and much more."

“Choosing ignorance might seem a terrible quality to exhibit in your workplace—a sure path down the stairs and out the corporate door. But stick with me here and see how it leads you upward. You’ll understand why great leaders embrace ignorance and use it to elevate their people to new heights of achievement.” A conductor in front of his orchestra is an iconic symbol of leadership—but what does a true maestro actually do to enable the right sort of cooperation among his players, leading to an excellent performance? If you think his primary job is making sure the musicians play the right notes, prepare to be surprised. For twenty years, in addition to conducting orchestras around the world, Itay Talgam has been a “conductor of people” for companies large and small, for CEOs of Fortune 500 companies as well as startup entrepreneurs, and beyond. Drawing on his decades of experience on the podium, he teaches nonmusicians how conducting really works and how the conductor’s art can help leaders in any field. In his lectures (including an acclaimed TED talk) and now in this book, Talgam shows why imposing your vision on your people is likely to backfire. Great conductors may know in advance how they want a piece to be played, but they make room for the creativity and passion of their musicians. They respect the gap between the baton and the instruments. They focus more on listening than on speaking. And they embrace their own ignorance, knowing that others may have better ideas than the conductor can imagine. Talgam explores the nuances of leadership by describing the distinctive styles of six world-famous conductors: the commanding Riccardo Muti, the fatherly and passionate Arturo Toscanini, the calm Richard Strauss, the gurulike Herbert von Karajan, the dancing Carlos Kleiber, and the master of dialogue Leonard Bernstein. All took different approaches to the age-old leadership dilemma: how to maximize both control and creative freedom at the same time. The Ignorant Maestro will empower you to help your own team make even more beautiful music. Talgam’s anecdotes and insights will change the way you think about listening, humility, and the path to unpredictable brilliance.

John Mauceri, who has stood on podiums before storied symphonies, operas, and ballets around the world, brings a lifetime of experience to bear in this informative, brilliantly entertaining exploration of his profession. As Mauceri traces the lineage of his craft, from Felix Mendelssohn (the first to use a baton) to the present day, he shows us how conducting is itself a composition: of legacy and tradition, of techniques handed down—and more than a trace of ineffable magic. Weaving clear musical explanations together with memorable accounts of working alongside masters like Bernstein and Stokowski, Mauceri reveals how conductors approach a piece with a combination of personal interpretation, imagination, and insight into the composer’s intent; what it takes to communicate solely through gesture, with sometimes hundreds of performers at once; and the occasionally glamorous, often challenging life of the itinerant maestro. Illuminating and instructive, inflected with candor, humor, and grace, Maestros and Their Music is the perfect guide to the allure and theater, passion and drudgery, rivalries and relationships of the conducting life.

This book is great for keyboardists who have learned the basics of jazz harmony and improvisation. Topics include a brief review of concepts and skills from Beginning Jazz Keyboard, and continue with the modes of the major scale, chord extensions, making the changes, using chromatic tones and guide tones, chord substitution, ""rhythm changes,"" the blues, altered dominant chords and more. Continuing the format of Beginning Jazz Keyboard, new concepts are reinforced by etudes and songs for practice. Packed with hundreds of harmony and improvisation ideas, this book is essential for any serious student of jazz keyboard.

This universal energy field is available to all of us. You too can harness the ability to heal using these techniques. His dream is for all people to know that they have healing abilities that go beyond what medical institutions can offer. Anushavan Manukyan practices and teaches bioenergy healing in Los Angeles.

A deeply personal, intimate conversation about music and writing between the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author and his close friend, the former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Haruki Murakami's passion for music runs deep. Before turning his hand to writing, he ran a jazz club in Tokyo, and from The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" to Franz Liszt's "Years of Pilgrimage," the aesthetic and emotional power of music permeates every one of his much-loved books. Now, in Absolutely on Music, Murakami fulfills a personal dream, sitting down with his friend, acclaimed conductor Seiji Ozawa, to talk, over a period of two years, about their shared interest. Transcribed from lengthy conversations about the nature of music and writing, here they discuss everything from Brahms to Beethoven, from Leonard Bernstein to Glenn Gould, from record collecting to pop-up orchestras, and much more. Ultimately this book gives readers an unprecedented glimpse into the minds of the two maestros. It is essential reading for book and music lovers everywhere.

Robert Chapmans memoir traces the life experiences of a boy from a small Vermont town that offered unusual opportunities to support his musical talents. Both in St. Johnsbury and at the New England Conservatory of Music he studied with professional musicians. He learned to deal with and celebrate his differences, including his talent, ADD, and homosexuality. His abilities led him to a career in church music, musical theater, private musical instruction, and club performances. His emotional satisfaction derives in large part from his 40-year old relationship with his partner, Jack Fisher. Now retired, he and Jack live in Florida.

The Steinway—once called the "instrument of the immortals"—is more than the preeminent American piano. It is also a symbol of Old World craftsmanship combined with American capitalism, of technological innovation, and of remarkable family management. This authoritative and entertaining book tells the story of the Steinway piano company and the people behind it. The first book based on the rich archive of Steinway business and family papers at LaGuardia Community College in New York, as well as on interviews with family members and company employees in the United States, Germany, and England, Steinway & Sons describes the making and marketing of an American cultural icon. Founded in New York in 1853 by a German immigrant, the Steinway company quickly rose to prominence on the strength of the distinctive "Steinway sound." For five generations Steinways steered their company in the face of vigorous domestic and foreign competition, bitter labor disputes, temperamental musicians, a fluctuating economy, and wars. Members of the Gilded Age elite, the family also contended with adultery, alcoholism, emotional depression, and long court battles over money. Lieberman discusses the company town the Steinways built in Queens in the 1870s to "escape the machinations of the anarchists and socialists" in the city; the decision to manufacture in both New York and Hamburg, which led to Steinway factories supplying both sides in World War II; the improvements in piano technology that made the Steinway the envy of other piano makers; the company's creative marketing techniques, such as booking celebrated European pianists into American concert halls; the competition from the Japanese-owned Yamaha company; and the sale of the financially troubled company to CBS in 1972. Weaving together themes from social, music, business, labor, and immigrant history, and lavishly illustrated with pictures from the Steinway archive, Steinway & Sons is a rich narrative that casts new light on American cultural history and on a unique family enterprise.