‘The Darker Aspects Of Life’ This week’s #MusicForWriters column: Like one of my favorite artists and friends, the music-theater virtuoso Martha Clarke, Michel van der Aa trades deliberately in what you’ll see him call in our interview “the darker aspects of life.” As a kid, we learn, he got into music on a psychologist’s advice, to… Read More
In Self-Publishing, The Gatekeepers Are Dead. Long Live The Gatekeepers!
‘To Establish Trust With Readers’ Readers aren’t all the same. Readers, in fact, are very different from one another. Some only want to read what everyone else is reading, so they can join a movement and a discussion. Some stick to what’s been adapted to the big and small screen, or what’s hit the NYT… Read More
#MusicForWriters: John Supko and ‘Rest’ For Musicians, Human And Otherwise
‘The Algebraic Picture Of My Self And Soul’ In last week’s Music for Writers interview with Bryce Dessner (for his Music For Wood and Strings), the composer told us: I think there’s something counter-intuitive about a lot of innovation in music in the last 20 years, in that so much of it has been driven… Read More
‘The Overselling Of Self-Publishing': New Perspective
‘A Serious Epidemic Of Impatience’ Here in New York City where BookExpo America (BEA) is holding the focus of many in the traditional publishing establishment, a friend and I were finishing lunch at Café Luxembourg when the waiter approached. “I overheard you guys talking about publishing,” he said. “I wondered if you could give me any advice about… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Bryce Dessner Strikes A New Chord Stick
‘Dreaming Of Music For There Wasn’t An Instrument’ When you listen to Bryce Dessner’s newly released recording of Music For Wood And Strings, you’re hearing sounds unprecedented in our experience. The “chord stick” is an instrument created by Aron Sanchez, half the team of Buke and Gase. While you might not think that Dessner, widely known… Read More
Global dreams, local challenges: BEA amid transition
Amazon’s shadow, BookCon’s boost, IDPF’s confab, Chinese Trajectory, scalding-hot Scalzi: Must be BEA Just in time to chill the rising heat of late-May New York: news of troubled talks in the UK between the biggest bookseller and the biggest book publisher on Earth. As my colleague Philip Jones writes at The Bookseller, “Penguin Random House UK and Amazon… Read More
What if the 90 percent does write a book?
‘Your followers are so cynical’ In digital publishing, we’ve been talking about that “tsunami of content” (thank you, Jon Fine) for a long time. This week here at BookExpo America (BEA), however, we had a good remi nder that the world at large may not yet understand the stupendously deepening inventory that has come right along with… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Joby Talbot On The ‘Path Of Miracles’
‘Translated To Heaven And Spain’ For most of us, it would be a miracle that a single element of aboriginal music survived in our memories from youth to adulthood. For composer Joby Talbot, however, retrieving his teenage hearing on BBC Radio 3 of the Taiwanese Bunan tribe’s Pasiputput seems to have been an easy stop on… Read More
The Dreaded Training Debate: What If It Can’t Be Taught?
“Like toadstools,” one seasoned observer calls it. It’s this sudden proliferation of “author services,” especially the ones there to teach you, instruct you, train you. They’re everywhere, these kitchen-sink companies, and many of them seem to be peddling (or claiming they do) parts of the job we’re not even sure can be taught. Today’s provocation is about… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Paola Prestini’s Songs From Another ‘Labyrinth’
‘You Can Free Yourself’ I wanted to write these two large-scale, deeply virtuosic pieces for these two muses, but I hadn’t had a chance to create a large-scale work like that yet. That comment may surprise regular #MusicForWriters readers who rememberour December article on the composer Paola Prestini and her Oceanic Verses. A complex work of… Read More