National Network for Equitable Library Service

Plotkin explores a thousand years of music, introducing listeners to more than one hundred great works and profiling significant composers.

John Szwed takes listeners on a tour of the varied and nonlinear history of jazz, exploring how it developed from an ethnic music to become America's most popular music and then part of the avant-garde in less than fifty years. Szwed's complete overview includes the major types of jazz and significant jazz musicians of the twentieth century; the roots of jazz, including its European and African influences; and recommended listening.

Ian F. Svenonius's experience as an iconic underground rock musician--playing in such highly influential and revolutionary outfits as the Make-Up and the Nation of Ulysses--gives him special insight on techniques for not only starting but also surviving a rock 'n' roll group. He provides an instructional guide, which doubles as a warning device, a philosophical text, an exercise in terror, and an aerobics manual.

Un son, une note, une mélodie et voilà... le cerveau en effervescence. Mais pourquoi certains airs arrivent-ils à nous tirer des larmes, à nous donner la chair de poule, à nous enthousiasmer ou à nous faire danser ? Pourquoi sommes-nous touchés par les symphonies de Beethoven, par les performances vocales de Céline Dion, par les reels endiablés de Ti-Jean Carignan ou encore par les concerts d'Arcade Fire ? Bien sûr, tout commence par l'oreille.

« Singing Bouddha » au Japon, « Quintessence du chant humain » en Tunisie, « Voix du Paradis » aux Etats-Unis, « Pavarotti de l'Orient » en France..., le chanteur pakistanais Nusrat FATEH ALI KHAN, a fait résonner partout dans le monde le qawwali, un chant soufi séculaire propice à l'extase divine.

In the tradition of Daniel Levitin's This Is Your Brain on Music and Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia, Bad Singer follows the delightful journey of Tim Falconer as he tries to overcome tone deafness--and along the way discovers what we're really hearing when we listen to music. A work of scientific discovery, musicology, and personal odyssey, Bad Singer is a fascinating, insightful, and highly entertaining account from an award-winning journalist and author.

Malcolm Forsyth (1936-2011) was a musical legend: a much-loved composer, performer, teacher, and mentor. Reflections on Malcolm Forsyth presents a captivating and approachable portrait of one of Canada's finest modern composers. Readers will discover both public and private sides to the man and gain fresh insights from critical assessments of a broad range of Forsyth's compositions, his continuing popular appreciation, and his lasting influence on the next generation of musicians and music scholars.

Eldon Davis Rathburn (1916-2008), one of the most multi-dimensional, prolific, and endlessly fascinating composers of the twentieth century, wrote more music than any other Canadian composer of his generation. During a long and productive career that spanned seventy-five years, Rathburn served for thirty years as a staff composer with the National Film Board of Canada (1947-76), scored the first generation of IMAX films, and created a diverse catalogue of orchestral and chamber works.

How relevant is classical music today? The genre seems in danger of becoming nothing more than a hobby for the social elite. Yet Kent Nagano has another world in mind - one where everyone has access to classical music. In Classical Music: Expect the Unexpected the world-famous classical conductor tells the deeply personal story of his own engagement with the masterpieces and great composers of classical music, his work with the world's major orchestras, and his tireless commitment to bringing his music to everybody.

John Weinzweig (1913-2006) was the pre-eminent Canadian composer of his generation. Influenced by European modernists such as Stravinsky, Berg, and Webern, he was the first Canadian composer to employ serialism, thereby bringing a spirit of innovation to mid-twentieth-century Canadian music. A forceful advocate for modern Canadian composition, Weinzweig played a key role in the founding of the Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Music Centre during a buoyant and expansive period for the arts in Canada.