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| Nicole's Pick to Click: Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music | 
Price: $24.00
 | By age 16, the author of this alternately piquant and morose memoir was dealing marijuana, bedding her instructors at a performing arts high school and studying the oboe. Later, her blossoming career as a freelance musician in New York introduced her to a classical music demimonde of cocaine parties and group sex that had her wondering why she "got hired for so many of my gigs in bed." But the vivace of the chapters on her bohemian salad days subsides to a largo as she heads toward 40 and the sex and drugs recede along with dreams of stardom; the reality of a future in Broadway orchestra pits (where she reads magazines as she plays to stave off boredom) sets in. Tindall escaped to journalism, but her resentment of an industry that "squeezed me dry of spontaneity" and turns other musicians into hollow-eyed "galley slaves" is raw. She mounts a biting critique of the conservatories that churn out thousands of graduates each year to pursue a handful of jobs, the superstar conductors and soloists who lord it over orchestral peons and a fine arts establishment she depicts as bloated and ripe for downsizing. Tindall's bitterness over what might still strike many readers as a pretty great career is a bit overdone, but she offers a fresh, highly readable and caustic perspective on an overglamorized world. |
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| Scott's Pick to Click: No Vivaldi in the Garage: A Requiem for Classical Music in North America | 
Price: $22.95
| In a work rich with colorful anecdotes about family, friends, and colleagues, Sheldon Morgenstern reflects on his childhood in Cleveland, Ohio, summers at the Brevard Music Festival, and years at Northwestern University. He recounts his experiences playing French horn in the Atlanta Symphony, studying conducting at the New England Conservatory, his long tenure as artistic director at the Eastern Music Festival at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and performances as guest conductor with dozens of orchestras around the world.
Morgenstern scrutinizes the reasons behind the increasing mediocrity of classical music and the precarious financial state of professional symphony orchestras, many of which have already declared bankruptcy. He sharply criticizes the NEA, the Canada Council, and other arts councils and political groups for the elimination of music education in nearly all public schools. He is also highly critical of Yo-Yo Ma, Shlomo Mintz, Daniel Barenboim, and other superstars who command extraordinary fees for sometimes second-rate performances but do little to teach young artists or to support struggling companies and festivals. He concludes by calling for strong actions that will ensure the economic survival of the arts without sacrificing excellence in performance.
Filled with vivid behind-the-scenes descriptions and highlighting such well-known figures as Leonard Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Wynton Marsalis, and others, No Vivaldi in the Garage offers a refreshingly candid insider's perspective on the classical music scene. |
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