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Muse: Cicely Tyson and Me: A Relationship Forged in Fashion
by B Michael“Friendship, love and a beautiful sense of togetherness sew together this gem of a book. B Michael...presents to us a portrait of a woman who was a rare gift to fashion and culture.” —EDWARD ENNINFUL, OBE, Editor-in-Chief, British Vogue & European Editorial Director, VogueA poignant and glorious photographic memoir that pays homage to the lifelong friendship between the legendary Cicely Tyson and acclaimed fashion designer B Michael, who worked with her to make her gorgeous through her last bow.What greater act of friendship is there than making someone dear look and feel their most beautiful and powerful? That was the priceless gift acclaimed designer B Michael gave to one of Hollywood’s greatest actresses, Cicely Tyson over the course of their close, decades-long relationship. In this glorious four-color visual memoir packed with stunning photographs, many never before seen, B Michael recalls the bond they shared and what it was like to dress the Queen of Hollywood for all the extraordinary events of her life.In 2005, B was summoned to create a suitable wardrobe for Ms. Tyson for a high-octane weekend hosted by Oprah Winfrey. That first successful interaction led to a nearly twenty-year-long personal and professional collaboration that defined the Hollywood star’s personal aesthetic and showcased her impeccable personality and style. B was with Ms. Tyson for the most glamorous times—the Academy Awards, the Emmy Awards, White House functions, glittering galas, high-profile funerals—as well as the tenderest days. Their circle included a who’s who of Black celebrities, including Sidney Poitier, Barack Obama, Common, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Lenny Kravitz, Viola Davis, Oprah, Tyler Perry, Valerie Simpson, Phylicia Rashad, and many more, most of whom are featured in personal and paparazzi photographs in these pages.Throughout their time together, B and Cicely enjoyed shocking the fashionistas, shattering inane rules limiting what a woman of a certain age should wear, devoted themselves to changing the world for the better through philanthropic efforts, laughed, cried, and inspired and celebrated each other’s excellence. In this stunning book featuring studio photos, candids from the author’s personal collection, and paparazzi shots, B shares every aspect of their time together—from the drama of a good sleeve to how to be the best friend possible to those we love.Whether you’re a fan of pop culture, couture, Hollywood, B, or Cicely Tyson, Muse is a reminder that we all have the power to be showstoppers in our own lives.Includes written contributions from Lenny Kravitz, Bridget Foley, Susan Fales Hill, and Valerie Simpson.
Muse: Uncovering the Hidden Figures Behind Art History's Masterpieces
by Ruth MillingtonThe fascinating true stories of thirty incredible muses—and their role in some of art history's most well-known masterpieces.We instantly recognize many of their faces from the world's most iconic artworks—but just who was Picasso's 'Weeping Woman'? Or the burglar in Francis Bacon's oeuvre? Why was Grace Jones covered in graffiti? Far from posing silently, muses have brought emotional support, intellectual energy, career-changing creativity, and practical help to artists. However, the perception of the muse is that of a passive, powerless model (usually young, attractive, and female) at the mercy of an influential and older male artist. Could this impression be incorrect and unfair? Is this trope a romanticized myth? Have people embraced, even sought, the status of muse? Most importantly, where would artists be without them? In Muse, Ruth Millington's goal is to re-assess and re-claim that word in a celebratory narrative that takes ownership and demonstrates how outdated the common perception of that word is. Muse also explores the idea of &‘muse&’ in a different way and includes performance artists and celebrities, iconic figures we perhaps haven&’t considered before as muses, such as Tilda Swinton and Grace Jones. By delving into the real-life relationships that models have held with the artists who immortalized them, it will expose the influential and active part they have played in contributing to the artwork they inspired, and explore the various ways people have subverted stereotypical &‘muse&’ roles. From job supervisors to homeless men in Harlem, Muse will reveal the unexpected, overlooked, and forgotten models of art history. Through the stories of thirty remarkable lives, from performing muses to muses who have been turned into messages, this book will deconstruct reductive stereotypes of the muse, and reframe it as a momentous and empowered agent of art history.
Museums in Central Asia and the Construction of National Narratives: Curating Identity
by Katarzyna JaroszThis book explores the role museums play in shaping the cultural and historical identities of Central Asia. Through an analysis of around 50 museums, this book offers insights into how these "memory machines" contribute to contemporary identity formation in Central Asia, serving as both cultural guardians and storytellers. It traces the development of these institutions from the Russian colonial era to the present, examining how they have navigated the region's complex socio-political landscape. The book addresses various themes, such as the influence of Soviet policies on museum development, the relationship between religion and atheism in museum narratives, and the renewed interest in pre-Soviet cultural heritage. It also considers how museums utilise historical figures and scientific achievements to craft national stories, exploring identity through the dual perspectives of settled and nomadic lifestyles.
Museums, Archives and Protest Memory (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies)
by Joanne Garde-Hansen Red ChidgeyThis book addresses the emergence of ‘protest memory’ as a powerful contemporary shaper of ideas and practices in culture, media and heritage domains. Directly focused on the role of museum and archive practitioners in protest memory curation, it makes a compelling contribution to our understanding of how social movements and activist experiences are publicly remembered and activated for social and environmental justice.
Music Comes Out of Silence: A Memoir
by Andras SchiffAndras Schiff is one of the most important pianists of our time. This stimulating account of his life and work, told in two parts, takes readers on an intimate journey from Schiff's childhood in Hungary through to the present day.In conversationw with Martin Meyer, Schiff discusses a diverse range of topics from his experiences with anti-Semitism and communist rule to his musical training with maestros such as Pál Kadosa and Ferenc Rados, as well as his thoughts on playing techniques and musical interpretation.In a collection of Schiff's writings we are enthralled by a guided tour of Bach's 'Goldberg' Variations, sobered by Schiff's public defiance against nationalistic and racist attitudes - to the extent that he refused to perform in Haider's Austria or Orban's Hungary - and delighted by the playful 'Ten Commandments' for concertgoers.More than a memoir, this is a seminal compilation of the thoughts and experiences of one of the greatest musicians of our time, of his inimitable art of making music out of silence.
Music Comes Out of Silence: A Memoir
by Andras SchiffAndras Schiff is one of the most important pianists of our time. This stimulating account of his life and work, told in two parts, takes readers on an intimate journey from Schiff's childhood in Hungary through to the present day.In conversationw with Martin Meyer, Schiff discusses a diverse range of topics from his experiences with anti-Semitism and communist rule to his musical training with maestros such as Pál Kadosa and Ferenc Rados, as well as his thoughts on playing techniques and musical interpretation.In a collection of Schiff's writings we are enthralled by a guided tour of Bach's 'Goldberg' Variations, sobered by Schiff's public defiance against nationalistic and racist attitudes - to the extent that he refused to perform in Haider's Austria or Orban's Hungary - and delighted by the playful 'Ten Commandments' for concertgoers.More than a memoir, this is a seminal compilation of the thoughts and experiences of one of the greatest musicians of our time, of his inimitable art of making music out of silence.
Music Is My Life: Louis Armstrong, Autobiography, and American Jazz
by Daniel SteinMusic Is My Lifeis the first comprehensive analysis of Louis Armstrong's autobiographical writings (including his books, essays, and letters) and their relation to his musical and visual performances. Combining approaches from autobiography theory, literary criticism, intermedia studies, cultural history, and musicology, Daniel Stein reconstructs Armstrong's performances of his life story across various media and for different audiences, complicating the monolithic and hagiographic views of the musician. The book will appeal to academic readers with an interest in African American studies, jazz studies, musicology, and popular culture, as well as general readers interested in Armstrong's life and music, jazz, and twentieth-century entertainment. While not a biography, it provides a key to understanding Armstrong's oeuvre as well as his complicated place in American history and twentieth-century media culture.
Music Makers: The Lives of Harry Freedman and Mary Morrison
by Walter PitmanMusic Makers examines and celebrates the extraordinary lives of composer Harry Freedman and his partner, soloist Mary Morrison.Harry, with roots in jazz and popular music, was a member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for 25 years. Canada’s Composer of the Year in 1979, he has written an enormous repertoire that celebrates Canada and is sung and played around the world.After a stellar career in Canada as a popular singer and opera diva, Mary became an esteemed exponent of Canadian vocal works. She was a prestigious mentor and teacher of young Canadians now appearing on famous opera stages worldwide. She received the League of Composers’ Music Citation in 1968 and won Canada’s major award as Opera Educator in 2002.
Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz
by Todd DeckerFred Astaire: one of the great jazz artists of the twentieth century? Astaire is best known for his brilliant dancing in the movie musicals of the 1930s, but in Music Makes Me, Todd Decker argues that Astaire's work as a dancer and choreographer --particularly in the realm of tap dancing--made a significant contribution to the art of jazz. Decker examines the full range of Astaire's work in filmed and recorded media, from a 1926 recording with George Gershwin to his 1970 blues stylings on television, and analyzes Astaire's creative relationships with the greats, including George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer. He also highlights Astaire's collaborations with African American musicians and his work with lesser known professionals--arrangers, musicians, dance directors, and performers.
Music Mavens: 15 Women of Note in the Industry (Women of Power #9)
by Ashley Walker Maureen CharlesNothing moves us like music. Music Mavens transports readers around the world (and beyond)—to a jazz performance in Genoa, an instrument lab in London, a Tokyo taiko dojo, a New York City beatbox battle, and even a film scoring session aboard the starship Enterprise, to name a few. Along the way, it spotlights artists whose work spans musical genres and industry roles, including composing and songwriting, performing and conducting, audio engineering, producing, and rock photography. In Music Mavens, 15 extraordinary women reveal how they turned their passions into platforms and how they use their power to uplift others. Their musical resumes will inspire, but the way each artist lives her life is the real story.
Music Since 1900: British Musical Modernism
by Philip RupprechtBritish Musical Modernism explores the works of eleven key composers to reveal the rapid shifts of expression and technique that transformed British art music in the post-war period. Responding to radical avant-garde developments in post-war Europe, the Manchester Group composers - Alexander Goehr, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Harrison Birtwistle - and their contemporaries assimilated the serial-structuralist preoccupations of mid-century internationalism to an art grounded in resurgent local traditions. In close readings of some thirty-five scores, Philip Rupprecht traces a modernism suffused with the formal elegance of the 1950s, the exuberant theatricality of the 1960s, and - in the works of David Bedford and Tim Souster - the pop, minimalist, and live-electronic directions of the early 1970s. Setting music-analytic insights against a broader social-historical backdrop, Rupprecht traces a British musical modernism that was at once a collective artistic endeavor, and a sounding myth of national identity.
Music Since 1900: Luigi Nono
by Carola Nielinger-VakilThe anti-fascist cantata Il canto sospeso, the string quartet Fragmente - Stille, an Diotima and the 'Tragedy of Listening' Prometeo cemented Luigi Nono's place in music history. In this study, Carola Nielinger-Vakil examines these major works in the context of Nono's amalgamation of avant-garde composition with Communist political engagement. Part I discusses Il canto sospeso in the context of all of Nono's anti-fascist pieces, from the unfinished Fučik project (1951) to Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatto in Auschwitz (1966). Nielinger-Vakil explores Nono's position at the Darmstadt Music Courses, the evolution of his compositional technique, his penchant for music theatre and his use of spatial and electronic techniques to set the composer and his works against the diverging circumstances in Italy and Germany after 1945. Part II further examines these concerns and shows how they live on in Nono's work after 1975, culminating in a thorough analysis of Prometeo.
Music Was IT: Young Leonard Bernstein
by Susan Goldman Rubin"Life without music is unthinkable."—Leonard Bernstein, FindingsWhen Lenny was two years old, his mother found that the only way to soothe her crying son was to turn on the Victrola. When his aunt passed on her piano to Lenny’s parents, the boy demanded lessons. When Lenny went to school, he had the most fun during "singing hours."But Lenny’s love of music was met with opposition from the start. Lenny’s father, a successful businessman, wanted Lenny to follow in his footsteps. Additionally, the classical music world of the 1930s and 1940s was dominated by Europeans—no American Jewish kid had a serious chance to make a name for himself in this field.Beginning with Lenny’s childhood in Boston and ending with his triumphant conducting debut at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic when he was just twenty-five, MUSIC WAS IT draws readers into the energetic, passionate, challenging, music-filled life of young Leonard Bernstein.Archival photographs, mostly from the Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress, illustrate this fascinating biography, which also includes a foreword by Bernstein’s daughter Jamie. Extensive back matter includes biographies of important people in Bernstein’s life, as well as a discography of his music.
Music and How it Works: The Complete Guide for Kids (How it Works)
by DKTake a visual journey through the world of music and learn the science behind it, too.Budding music fans will love discovering musical geniuses of every era, from Mozart and classical music to Bowie and pop, as well as finding out how music is created and what links it all together.The book looks at music throughout history, beginning with the first known melody from the Fertile Crescent and covering modern music phenomena, from K Pop to hip-hop. Instruments and genres from across the world are featured, with "playlists" of key pieces encouraging kids to look up pieces to hear for themselves. STEAM spreads delve into the psychology and math behind music, from how it affects our mood to how it can improve our minds. Covering India's Ragas, Indonesia's Gamelan, Japan's city pop, and more, this book will help children discover a love of music.
Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert
by John DruryThis &“powerfully absorbing&” biography of 17th century Welsh poet George Herbert brings essential personal and social context to his immortal poetry (Financial Times). Though he never published any of his English poems during his lifetime, George Herbert has been celebrated for centuries as one of the greatest religious poets in the language. In this richly perceptive biography, author and theologian John Drury integrates Herbert&’s poems fully into his life, enriching our understanding of both the poet&’s mind and his work. As Drury writes in his preface, Herbert lived &“a quiet life with a crisis in the middle of it.&” Beginning with his early academic success, Drury chronicles the life of a man who abandons the path to a career at court and chooses to devote himself to the restoration of a church in Huntingdonshire and lives out his life as a country parson. Because Herbert&’s work was only published posthumously, it has always been difficult to know when or in what context he wrote his poems. But Drury skillfully places readings of the poems into his narrative, allowing us to appreciate not only Herbert&’s frame of mind while writing, but also the society that produced it. He reveals the occasions of sorrow, happiness, regret, and hope that Herbert captured in his poetry and that led T. S. Eliot to write, &“What we can confidently believe is that every poem . . . is true to the poet&’s experience.&” &“It is hard to imagine a better book for anyone, general reader or seventeenth-century aficionado or teacher or student, newly embarking on Herbert.&”—The Guardian, UK
Music for Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets
by Wendy LesserMost previous books about Dmitri Shostakovich have focused on either his symphonies and operas, or his relationship to the regime under which he lived, or both, since these large-scale works were the ones that attracted the interest and sometimes the condemnation of the Soviet authorities. Music for Silenced Voiceslooks at Shostakovich through the back door, as it were, of his fifteen quartets, the works which his widow characterized as a "diary, the story of his soul. " The silences and the voices were of many kinds, including the political silencing of adventurous writers, artists, and musicians during the Stalin era; the lost voices of Shostakovich's operas (a form he abandoned just before turning to string quartets); and the death-silenced voices of his close friends, to whom he dedicated many of these chamber works. Wendy Lesser has constructed a fascinating narrative in which the fifteen quartets, considered one at a time in chronological order, lead the reader through the personal, political, and professional events that shaped Shostakovich's singular, emblematic twentieth-century life. Weaving together interviews with the composer's friends, family, and colleagues, as well as conversations with present-day musicians who have played the quartets, Lesser sheds new light on the man and the musician. One of the very few books about Shostakovich that is aimed at a general rather than an academic audience,Music for Silenced Voicesis a pleasure to read; at the same time, it is rigorously faithful to the known facts in this notoriously complicated life. It will fill readers with the desire to hear the quartets, which are among the most compelling and emotionally powerful monuments of the past century's music.
Music from the True Vine: Mike Seeger's Life and Musical Journey
by Bill C. MaloneA musician, documentarian, scholar, and one of the founding members of the influential folk revival group New Lost City Ramblers, Mike Seeger (1933-2009) spent more than fifty years collecting, performing, and commemorating the culture and folk music of white and black southerners, which he called "music from the true vine. " In this fascinating biography, Bill Malone explores the life and musical contributions of folk artist Seeger, son of musicologists Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger and brother of folksingers Pete and Peggy Seeger. Malone argues that Seeger, while not as well known as his brother, may be more important to the history of American music through his work in identifying and giving voice to the people from whom the folk revival borrowed its songs. Seeger recorded and produced over forty albums, including the work of artists such as Libba Cotton, Tommy Jarrell, Dock Boggs, and Maybelle Carter. In 1958, with an ambition to recreate the southern string bands of the twenties, he formed the New Lost City Ramblers, helping to inspire the urban folk revival of the sixties. Music from the True Vinepresents Seeger as a gatekeeper of American roots music and culture, showing why generations of musicians and fans of traditional music regard him as a mentor and an inspiration.
Music in the Life of Albert Schweitzer
by Charles R. JoySelections from Schweitzer's writings about music, his early raptures, Bach, organs and organ-building, Africa, and an essay on Medicine, Theology and Music.
Music in the Sky: The Life, Art and Teachings of the 17th Karmapa Orgyen Trinley Dorje
by Michele MartinAs the second millennium drew to a close, the Seventeenth Karmapa leapt from the roof of his monastery in Tibet. Evading his Chinese guards, the fourteen-year-old spiritual leader began a grueling, dangerous journey to India. The Karmapa's picture has appeared all over the world since then, yet his own words are hard to find. Now for the first time in print, Music in the Sky offers a series of the Karmapa's profound teachings an extensive selection of his poetry and a detailed and gripping account of his life and flight from his homeland. <P><P>Readers will be captivated by this wonderfully accessible and profound book. Music in the Sky concludes with brief biographies of all sixteen previous Karmapas, specially composed for this collection by the highly respected Seventh Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. Here the reader will discover the compelling histories of the first Tibetan masters to be recognized as reincarnate lamas. Music in the Sky presents a definitive portrait of the Seventeenth Karmapa, strengthened and illuminated by an authoritative depiction of his place in one of the world's most revered lines of spiritual teachers.
Music to My Years: A Mixtape Memoir of Growing Up and Standing Up
by Cristela AlonzoIn this memoir full of humor and heart, comedian, writer, and producer Cristela Alonzo shares personal stories of growing up as a first-generation Mexican-American in Texas and following her dreams to pursue a career in comedy. When Cristela Alonzo and her family lived as squatters in an abandoned diner, they only had two luxuries: a television and a radio, which became her pop cultural touchstone and a guiding light. Cristela shares her experiences and struggles of being a first-generation American, her dreams of becoming a comedian, and how it feels to be a creator in a world that often minimizes people of color and women. Her stories range from the ridiculous—like the time she made her own tap shoes out of bottle caps or how the theme song of The Golden Girls landed her in the principal’s office—to the sobering moments, like how she turned to stand-up comedy to grieve the heartbreaking loss of her mother and how, years later, she’s committed to giving back to the community that helped make her. Each significant moment of the book relates to a song, and the resulting playlist is deeply moving, resonant, and unforgettable. Music to My Years will make you laugh, cry, and even inspire you to make a playlist of your own.
Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music
by Joan Retallack John Cage"I was obliged to find a radical way to work -- to get at the real, at the root of the matter," John Cage says in this trio of dialogues, completed just days before his death. His quest for the root of the matter led him beyond the bounds of the conventional in all his musical, written, and visual pieces. The resulting expansion of the definition of art -- with its concomitant emphasis on innovation and invention -- earned him a reputation as one of America's most influential contemporary artists. Joan Retallack's conversations with Cage represent the first consideration of his artistic production in its entirety, across genres. Informed by the perspective of age, Cage's comments range freely from his theories of chance and indeterminate composition to his long-time collaboration with Merce Cunningham to the aesthetics of his multimedia works. A composer for whom the whole world -- with its brimming silences and anarchic harmonies -- was a source of music, Cage once claimed, "There is no noise, only sounds." As these interviews attest, that penchant for testing traditions reached far beyond his music. His lifelong project, Retallack writes in her comprehensive introduction, was "dislodging cultural authoritarianism and gridlock by inviting surprising conjunctions within carefully delimited frameworks and processes." Consummate performer to the end, Cage delivers here just such a conjunction -- a tour de force that provides new insights into the man and a clearer view of the status of art in the 20th century.
Musical Landscapes in Color: Conversations with Black American Composers (Music in American Life)
by William C. BanfieldNow available in paperback, William C. Banfield’s acclaimed collection of interviews delves into the lives and work of forty-one Black composers. Each of the profiled artists offers a candid self-portrait that explores areas from training and compositional techniques to working in a exclusive canon that has existed for a very long time. At the same time, Banfield draws on sociology, Western concepts of art and taste, and vernacular musical forms like blues and jazz to provide a frame for the artists’ achievements and help to illuminate the ongoing progress and struggles against industry barriers. Expanded illustrations and a new preface by the author provide invaluable added context, making this new edition an essential companion for anyone interested in Black composers or contemporary classical music. Composers featured: Michael Abels, H. Leslie Adams, Lettie Beckon Alston, Thomas J. Anderson, Dwight Andrews, Regina Harris Baiocchi, David Baker, William C. Banfield, Ysaye Maria Barnwell, Billy Childs, Noel DaCosta, Anthony Davis, George Duke, Leslie Dunner, Donal Fox, Adolphus Hailstork, Jester Hairston, Herbie Hancock, Jonathan Holland, Anthony Kelley, Wendell Logan, Bobby McFerrin, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Jeffrey Mumford, Gary Powell Nash, Stephen Newby, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Michael Powell, Patrice Rushen, George Russell, Kevin Scott, Evelyn Simpson-Curenton, Hale Smith, Billy Taylor, Frederick C. Tillis, George Walker, James Kimo Williams, Julius Williams, Tony Williams, Olly Wilson, and Michael Woods
Musical Lives and Times Examined: Keynotes and Clippings, 2006–2019
by Richard TaruskinIn this new and final collection, Richard Taruskin gathers a sweeping range of keynote speeches, reviews, and critical essays from the first twenty years of the twenty-first century. With twenty-three essays in total, this volume presents five lectures delivered in Budapest on Hungarian music and ten essays on Russian music. Reviews of contemporary work in musicology and reflections on the place of music in society showcase Taruskin’s trademark wit and breadth. Musical Lives and Times Examined is an essential collection, a comprehensive portrait of a distinguished figure in music studies, illuminating the ideas that have transformed the discipline and will continue to do so.
Musical Stages: An Autobiography
by Richard RodgersRichard Rodgers was one of the most successful, prolific composers of the last century. His songs are as well known today as when he created them more than 50 years ago, for musicals such as South Pacific, Pal Joey, Carousel, the King and I, The Sound of Music and Oklahoma! At 16 he began a long working relationship with the brilliant but tormented lyricist Lorenz hart and then went on to collaborate for another 20 years with the sturdier and equally inspired Oscar Hammerstein II. Late in his extraordinary life, Rodgers wrote what has sine become a celebrated autobiography and a classic of the theatre world, Musical Stages.
Musically Speaking
by Dr Ruth K. Westheimer"Music, I have come to realize, is for me a kind of golden thread running through my life. It has helped maintain my connection with the past that otherwise might have been severed by catastrophe and time. I am often asked--indeed, I often wonder myself--why it is that I should always have had such joie de vivre in the face of the losses and dislocations I had to endure in my early years. The answer I always gave was that the warmth and security of my early childhood had a remarkable power and influence. This is certainly true. But now I have realized that there is another part to the answer. And that is music."--from the introductionWho among us does not have a song that triggers vivid memories--of jubilation, of belonging, of sorrow, of love? In Musically Speaking, Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, one of America's most beloved personalities, has written a warm and contemplative book about the role music has played in her life and the ineradicable traces it has left on her thoughts, emotions, her very being.In this memoir through song, Dr. Ruth invites us to share her story from a uniquely musical perspective. By the time she was thirty, Ruth Westheimer had lived in five countries, each with a distinctive musical culture, each with a different hold on her sensibility. For the first ten years of her life, the comforting melodies of childhood helped drown out the anthems of Nazism to be heard elsewhere in her native Germany; as an adolescent refugee in Switzerland, she came to be aware that, however loudly she sang the patriotic songs of the land that gave her shelter, she could never truly be at home there.Present at the creation of the modern state of Israel, she sang and danced to the new music of a new nation; as a young woman eagerly absorbing all that Paris had to offer in the way of romance and worldliness in the early 1950s, the songs of Edith Piaf, Mouloudji, and Yves Montand were her tutors. An almost accidental emigration to America brought new challenges and new stability, as she became a wife, mother, and professional; tremendous and unforeseen celebrity came later, and with it the giddy opportunity to indulge her love of music as never before.Always, the classical repertoire of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Brahms has drawn Westheimer to a German culture that has belonged--and not belonged--to her throughout her life. And always, the music of the Jewish tradition has given her strength and comfort beyond words.Affording a view of Dr. Ruth from a rare private vantage point, Musically Speaking offers wondrous testimony to the resilience of the human spirit. This is a book full of color, verve, humor, and wisdom, unfolding gracefully through the beloved music of the Jewish holidays, the lullabies of childhood, the songs that sustained an orphan and roused the courage of a young woman, the melodies that enable a widow grieving for her husband to recall, from deep within the years of love, companionship, and happiness.