Organized into four main parts, this book first explores the mind-body connection and then separately discusses the mind, body, and soul of musicians, scholars, performers, and teachers of all voices and instruments. With terms, questions for reflection, and assignments at the...

""The ancient practice of yoga, which has exploded in popularity in the United States over the past two decades, has the potential to help music students learn to practice more mindfully and reach peak performance more quickly. This book explores how professional musicians and music teachers of all instruments and levels can use yoga postures (asana) and breath work (pranayama) to enhance artistry. It begins with an overview of yoga philosophy and history before delving into principles of movement, alignment, anatomy, and breath. Following a research-oriented chapter illustrating the cognitive, physical, and emotional benefits of yoga, each chapter explores the unique benefits of yoga for a particular population of students, describing specific poses, modifications, sequences, and sample curricula that teachers can immediately implement into private lessons or group classes. Chapter Four describes the developmental benefits of yoga and music education in early childhood and includes a sample eight-week preschool music curriculum. Chapter Five on the adolescent student explains how yoga can alleviate stress related to social and performance anxiety, enhance mindfulness, and increase peer support in a music studio. Chapter Six, for professional musicians and college students, describes how yoga can prevent or alleviate repetitive stress injuries and other physical symptoms. The final chapter offers ideas for appropriate modifications for the retired adult along with a sample eight-week curriculum to combine yoga with Recreational Music Making. Throughout the book, yoga is presented as a tool for reducing physical tension and anxiety while simultaneously improving body awareness, enhancing cognition, and helping music students to achieve peak performance. ""--

The Athletic Musician is an innovative approach that teaches musicians how to prevent and manage injuries, presented in a unique format that combines sound medical protocol with a musician's point of view. Harrison, a musician, discusses the magnitude of the problem of musicians' injuries with reference to statistical surveys and discusses the emotional and psychological impact of injury on the individual musician. Paull, an orthopedic physiotherapist describes, in layman's terms, the athletic approach to a musician's injuries. Each commonly injured area is examined in turn, from neck, back and shoulder pain to arm, wrist and hand problems. For each area, the anatomy is described, followed by an explanation of what causes the injury and how to avoid or prevent the injury from occurring. Musicians should regard themselves as elite 'musical athletes' and protect themselves from injury by following athletic training protocols. The authors present appropriate stretching regimes and postural corrections for both on and off stage, as well as ergonomic changes to instrument and playing positions. The text is amply illustrated with sketches for every exercise and stretch, photographs of musicians demonstrating playing postures, and unique anatomical drawings of musicians. The Athletic Musician presents research-based, scientific material in a format that is relevant, clear, and practical for all musicians. The combination of a medical and musical perspectives makes it an indispensable guide for all musicians and the health care professionals who aspire to help them.

This manual gives musicians and other performers practical insights on every aspect of performance. Through real life examples and pre-performance exercises, Gordon also offers detailed and workable suggestions for solving the issues and problems associated with live performance.

A well-known noise musician disappears, leaving behind only questions, only to return, twelve years later, with no real answers. Where did he go for over a decade? Perhaps he met a victim of the Slit-Mouth Woman and they took a night train to nowhere. Perhaps they stumbled on an industrial wasteland of a city filled with strange doctors, mysterious foreigners, psychotic policemen, and unfriendly residents. Perhaps they became caught between violent struggles they barely understood in their journey to go back home. One can only speculate. Malarkey Books is proud to present Music Is Over!, a surreal picaresque horror novel by Ben Arzate. It's very weird, it's totally bizarre, it's kind of violent, and it's weirdly touching. It's all of these things but more than anything it's just a cool book. Cover design by Mark Wilson. Typesetting by Michael Kazepis. Ebook available at malarkeybooks.com.

This book is the first full biography of George Szell, one of the greatest orchestra and opera conductors of the twentieth century. From child prodigy pianist and composer to world-renowned conductor, Szell's career spanned seven decades, and he led most of the great orchestras and opera companies of the world, including the New York Philharmonic, the NBC and Chicago Symphonies, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and Opera, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. A protégé of composer-conductor Richard Strauss at the Berlin State Opera, his crowning achievement was his twenty-four-year tenure as musical director of the Cleveland Orchestra, transforming it into one of the world's greatest ensembles, touring triumphantly in the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union, South Korea, and Japan. Michael Charry, a conductor who worked with Szell and interviewed him, his family, and his associates over several decades, draws on this first-hand material and correspondence, orchestra records, reviews, and other archival sources to construct a lively and balanced portrait of Szell's life and work from his birth in 1897 in Budapest to his death in 1970 in Cleveland. Readers will follow Szell from his career in Europe, Great Britain, and Australia to his guest conducting at the New York Philharmonic and his distinguished tenure at the Metropolitan Opera and Cleveland Orchestra. Charry details Szell's personal and musical qualities, his recordings and broadcast concerts, his approach to the great works of the orchestral repertoire, and his famous orchestrational changes and interpretation of the symphonies of Robert Schumann. The book also lists Szell's conducting repertoire and includes a comprehensive discography. In highlighting Szell's legacy as a teacher and mentor as well as his contributions to orchestral and opera history, this biography will be of lasting interest to concert-goers, music lovers, conductors, musicians inspired by Szell's many great performances, and new generations who will come to know those performances through Szell's recorded legacy.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social, or technological—now updated with a new chapter on digital curation. “How Music Works is a buoyant hybrid of social history, anthropological survey, autobiography, personal philosophy, and business manual”—The Boston Globe Utilizing his incomparable career and inspired collaborations with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and many others, David Byrne taps deeply into his lifetime of knowledge to explore the panoptic elements of music, how it shapes the human experience, and reveals the impetus behind how we create, consume, distribute, and enjoy the songs, symphonies, and rhythms that provide the backbeat of life. Byrne’s magnum opus uncovers thrilling realizations about the redemptive liberation that music brings us all.