The Moment Before The Music Begins

For over twenty five years Lisa Campbell Albert and Bill Lynch have been collaborating on and in Musical Theatre; working in professional productions, conducting workshops, teaching song study, and coaching both professional and aspiring Musical Theatre artists.Over the years (and the occasional beers), they maintained an ongoing dialogue. They noticed that they were both almost invariably drawn to the same artists. So they asked each other the simple question “why?” What was it that these artists had, or perhaps more importantly, what was it that these artists did that compelled Lisa and Bill to both become involved with the song? While the question seemed simple, the answer seemed elusive. After much debate and discussion, eventually the answer became clear: Lisa and Bill understood why the artist was singing. That's because the artist knew why they were singing. The need to sing arose in the artist long before the first chord of the song was struck, and was sustained until the final chord resolved. Lisa and Bill cared about why they were singing, therefore cared more about what they were doing in the song than how they were singing the song.In short, the need to sing began for the artist in the moments before the music began. Lisa and Bill set out to develop a vocabulary and a process that guides singers to discover their personal reason for why they are singing a specific song. Through a series of specific questions, the singer then develops a series of actions to play using the lyric, the melody and the accompaniment as tools to achieve an objective. This empowers the singer to make a song their own while honoring the given circumstances provided by the composer, lyricist and librettist.After years of testing and refining this process with students of all ages and levels of experience, Lisa and Bill are excited to share their T.E.A.M tm approach to song study.

Music of Silence shows how to incorporate the sacred meaning of monastic living into everyday life by following the natural rhythm of the hours of the day. The book tells how mindfulness and prayer can reconnect us with the sources of joy. “An invitation to join in quiet ecstasy, to rediscover sacred rhythms.” — Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates

Long remembered chiefly for its modernist exhibitions on the South Bank in London, the 1951 Festival of Britain also showcased British artistic creativity in all its forms. In Tonic to the Nation, Nathaniel G. Lew tells the story of the English classical music and opera composed and revived for the Festival, and explores how these long-overlooked components of the Festival helped define English music in the post-war period. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Lew looks closely at the work of the newly chartered Arts Council of Great Britain, for whom the Festival of Britain provided the first chance to assert its authority over British culture. The Arts Council devised many musical programs for the Festival, including commissions of new concert works, a vast London Season of almost 200 concerts highlighting seven centuries of English musical creativity, and several schemes to commission and perform new operas. These projects were not merely directed at bringing audiences to hear new and old national music, but to share broader goals of framing the national repertory, negotiating between the conflicting demands of conservative and progressive tastes, and using music to forge new national definitions in a changed post-war world.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “This is the most important book ever written about time management.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get around to what counts? Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. Whether we’re starting our own business, or trying to write a novel during our lunch break, or staring down a pile of deadlines as we’re planning a vacation, we’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless struggle against distraction. We’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we can do things differently. Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

This collection initiates a resolutely interdisciplinary research dynamic specifically concerning musical creativity. Creativity is one of the most challenging issues currently facing scientific psychology and its study has been relatively rare in the cognitive sciences, especially in artificial intelligence. This book will address the need for a coherent and thorough exploration. Musical Creativity: Multidisciplinary Research in Theory and Practice comprises seven sections, each viewing musical creativity from a different scientific vantage point, from the philosophy of computer modelling, through music education, interpretation, neuroscience, and music therapy, to experimental psychology. Each section contains discussions by eminent international specialists of the issues raised, and the book concludes with a postlude discussing how we can understand creativity in the work of eminent composer, Jonathan Harvey. This unique volume presents an up-to-date snapshot of the scientific study of musical creativity, in conjunction with ESCOM (the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music). Describing many of the different aspects of musical creativity and their study, it will form a useful springboard for further such study in future years, and will be of interest to academics and practitioners in music, psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, neuroscience and other fields concerning the study of human cognition in this most human of behaviours.

The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.