Category: Music

The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts

Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts

Fittingly, if annoyingly, I have mislaid my copy of The Lost Pianos of Siberia, so this will have to be from memory, just like many of the stories that Sophy Roberts collects over the course of the book. The conceit of the story is that Roberts was spending most of a summer with a German …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/20/the-lost-pianos-of-siberia-by-sophy-roberts/

A Devil to Play by Jasper Rees

A friend whose son plays the French horn was struck by the quality of Jasper Rees’ writing and sent me a copy of A Devil to Play, thinking that I would enjoy this memoir of renewing acquaintance with a musical instrument abandoned in Rees’ final years of school, and of course she was completely right. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/07/22/a-devil-to-play-by-jasper-rees/

Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music by Blair Tindall

By the time Blair Tindall gets to the skills analysis that tells her she’s terrible at logic and analysis, I was so frustrated with this book that I said aloud, “You got that right.” Other things she gets right in the book: the fly-on-the wall look at the life of a professional classical musician of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/17/mozart-in-the-jungle-sex-drugs-and-classical-music-by-blair-tindall/

The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman

One of the descriptions of Neil Gaiman that has stuck in my head is “reasonably facile writer.” He used the phrase in a New Yorker profile back in 2010, and there’s a British self-deprecating quality to the description, but there’s more than a little truth to it, too. Gaiman writes quickly, and with reasonable facility, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/11/01/the-view-from-the-cheap-seats-by-neil-gaiman/

Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter

Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter is three hundred pages of wonderful, unadulterated squee. It’s a companion to the musical that I’ve been listening to nearly non-stop since last September, a documentation of the development of a show that’s clearly going into the canon of American theater and has already burst the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/06/20/hamilton-the-revolution-by-lin-manuel-miranda-and-jeremy-mccarter/

Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

I completely abused the Highlight function on my Kindle when reading this book. A vital, sensitive exploration of her childhood and youth, heading into maturity and fame, Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl is written by Carrie Brownstein (and ONLY Carrie Brownstein) with a wit and honesty unusual for the vast majority of celebrity memoirs. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/01/05/hunger-makes-me-a-modern-girl-by-carrie-brownstein/