Now available from Amadeus Press...

297 pp, 6 b/w illus., 6 x 9", hardcover

ISBN: 1-57467-039-5

$24.95, plus shipping and handling

Publication Date: September 1998

Available from Amadeus Press, LLC, 512 Newark Pompton Turnpike, Pompton Plains, NJ 07444 Telephone: (973) 835-6375, (800) 321-3408. http://www.amadeuspress.com/ and email at publicity@amadeuspress.com

These intensely personal and perceptive essays explore the author’s life as a pianist—practicing, performing, teaching, and writing—but they could be the thoughts and reflections of any artist. They recount the challenges, rewards, and joys of a career as a musician, but since Carol Montparker is also a perceptive musical journalist, her noteworthy interviews and conversations with other musicians emphasize the universality of her own perceptions.

Organized into four settings—at home, on the stage, in the studio, in the field—the essays are the fruit of many years’ experience. With humor and warmth, they tell of quiet domestic delights, the frustrations of performing on poor instruments in cold halls, the satisfactions of sharing one’s understanding of a favorite piece with an eager student, and unforgettable encounters with great pianists of our age, some of them now departed: Rubinstein, Gould, Cherkassky, Arrau.