First published over seventy years ago, this imaginative series of studies is as useful and relevant now as it ever has been. Each volume has studies composed by well known and lesser known composers and is carefully graded to offer a variety of keys, time signatures, textures and tempi, whilst each study is given a title which tells the student exactly what it is trying to achieve. These books provide invaluable practice material for the building of technique and are also enjoyable to play in their own right.

Each piece in the Solo Books coordinates page-by-page with the Lesson Books, reinforcing newly learned concepts presented at the lesson. Includes adorable full-color illustrations that enhance each piece.

Piano Mix is packed full of brilliant music that has been specially arranged for easy piano. It's a whirlwind of styles and genres from centuries gone by through to the present day. The repertoire reflects the type of music found in our Piano syllabuses. In Piano Mix 3 the pieces are mostly at Grade 3 standard, helping pianists progress to Grade 4 towards the end of the book. The series has been compiled and edited by David Blackwell with arrangements by Alan Bullard, Nikki Iles, Christopher Norton and Tim Richards to name a few. Every arrangement is enjoyable to play because it fits well under the pianist's hands while remaining faithful to the original work. Well-known music includes The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams and 'Consider yourself' from Oliver! There are also lots of unsung melodies to be discovered, like 'Clog Dance' from La fille mal gardee and a traditional Serbian folk tune Djurdjevka. From the orchestra to the opera and from folk to jazz, there's a world of music at your fingertips! Perfect for learners exploring repertoire for the own-choice piece in ABRSM's Performance Grade exams

Brings to light the life and work of one of France's most distinguished musicians in the most complete biography in any language of Charles-Marie Widor. Widor: A Life beyond the Toccata brings to light the life and work of one of France's most distinguished musicians in the most complete biography in any language of Charles-Marie Widor. He is considered one of the greatestorganists of his time, a prolific composer in nearly every genre, professor of organ and composition at the Paris Conservatory, academician and administrator at the Institute of France, journalist, conductor, music editor, scholar, correspondent, inspired visionary, and man of deep culture. An appendix constitutes the most complete listing ever compiled of Widor's oeuvre. Each work is dated as accurately as possible and includes the publisher, platenumber, dedicatee, and relevant commentary. Another appendix lists Widor's complete published writings, other than the scores of press reviews he penned over several decades. Widor: A Life beyond the Toccata illuminates the life and work of one of France's most distinguished yet neglected musicians of the belle epoque. JOHN R. NEAR is Professor Emeritus of Music, Principia College.

More than any other part of Bach's output, his keyboard works conveyed the essence of his inimitable art to generations of admirers. The varied responses to this repertory - in scholarly and popular writing, public lectures, musical composition and transcription, performances and editions - ensured its place in the canon and broadened its creator's appeal. The early reception of Bach's keyboard music also continues to affect how we understand and value it, though we rarely recognize that historical continuity. Here, Matthew Dirst investigates how Bach's music intersects with cultural, social and music history, focusing on a repertory which is often overshadowed in scholarly and popular literature on Bach reception. Organized around the most productive ideas generated by Bach's keyboard works from his own day to the middle of the nineteenth century, this study shows how Bach's remarkable and long-lasting legacy took shape amid critical changes in European musical thought and practice.

"In "Lennie Tristano: His Life in Music,""" Shim has provided a comprehensive biographical and analytical account of one of jazz's most important and most frequently misunderstood figures. Her insights into Tristano's personality are well nuanced, and the focus on his teaching makes a unique contribution to the history of jazz. This vividly written study is likely to become a standard work."
--Brian Priestley, author of "Chasin' the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker" and coauthor of "The Rough Guide to Jazz" "Eunmi Shim's book is clearly a labor of love. Her thorough examination of Tristano's teaching is particularly important, for no one previously has assembled the thoughts of so many former students. Her illuminating transcriptions of, and commentaries on, Tristano's solos are also valuable. "Lennie Tristano" is an important contribution to the literature on jazz."--Thomas Owens, author of "Bebop: The Music and Its Players" "Comprehensive, objective, and acute in its judgments, this is the biography of Lennie Tristano we have been waiting for."--Larry Kart, author of "Jazz in Search of Itself" Lennie Tristano occupies a rare position not only in jazz history but in the history of twentieth-century music. Emerging from an era when modernism was the guiding principle in art, Tristano explored musical avenues that were avant-garde even by modernism's experimental standards. In so doing, he tested and transcended the boundaries of jazz. In 1949, years before musicians such as Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor took credit for the movement, Tristano made the first recordings of "free jazz," a new kind of group improvisation based on spontaneous interaction among band memberswithout any regard for predetermined form, harmony, or rhythm. Then, in the 1950s, Tristano broke new ground by his use of multitracking. Tristano was also a pioneer in the teaching of jazz, devoting the latter part of his career almost exclusively to music instruction. He founded a jazz school--the first of its kind--among whose students were saxophonists Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz, and pianist Sal Mosca. With its blend of oral history, archival research, and musical analysis, "Lennie Tristano" sheds new light on the important role Tristano played in the jazz world and introduces this often-overlooked musician to a new generation of jazz aficionados. Eunmi Shim received her Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is now Assistant Professor of Music at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This is her first book.

(Beginning Piano Solo Play-Along). The Beginning Piano Solo Play-Along series is designed for pianists ready to play their first solo. Each volume comes with a CD of orchestrated arrangements. The music in this book matches these recorded orchestrations, and is carefully arranged for beginning pianists. There are two tracks: a full performance track for listening and practice, plus a separate backing track that lets you be the soloist The CD is playable on any CD player, and is also enhanced so Mac & PC users can adjust the recording to any tempo without changing the pitch. This volume features 8 Disney classics: Can You Feel the Love Tonight * If I Never Knew You (Love Theme from Pocahontas ) * Mickey Mouse March * Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious * When She Loved Me * A Whole New World * You Can Fly You Can Fly You Can Fly * Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.

(Willis). Eight worship tunes perfect for the young student. An excellent supplement to any piano method and great sight-reading material for any age. Features: Awesome God * Here I Am to Worship * Hosanna (Praise Is Rising) * More Precious than Silver * Praise the Name of Jesus * There Is a Redeemer * Thy Word * Your Grace Is Enough.

Easy instructions with over 250 new and old melodies with fingerings; 17 with words; three for both hands; and two easy songs with piano.

The widely held belief that Beethoven was a rough pianist, impatient with his instruments, is not altogether accurate: it is influenced by anecdotes dating from when deafness had begun to impair his playing. Presenting a new, detailed biography of Beethoven's formative years, this book reviews the composer's early career, outlining how he was influenced by teachers, theorists and instruments. Skowroneck describes the development and decline of Beethoven's pianism, and pays special attention to early pianos, their construction and their importance for Beethoven and the modern pianist. The book also includes new discussions of legato and Beethoven's trills, and a complete annotated review of eyewitnesses' reports about his playing. Skowroneck presents a revised picture of Beethoven which traces his development from an impetuous young musician into a virtuoso in command of many musical resources.

Twelve of today's most distinguished scholar-performers offer essays in this volume on new and intriguing aspects of baroque keyboard music. Topics include fresh evidence on music of the seventeenth century (Frescobaldi, Froberger and Purcell), the place of the keyboard in concerted music and on comparative teaching methods (Couperin, Marpurg and Roeser), studies of the repertoire of J. S. Bach and his sons (including ornamentation in C. P. E. Bach and the Polonaises of Wilhelm Friedemann), and writing on the later eighteenth century (including Mozart) and on matters of repertoire and performance practice (continuo playing, improvisation). The volume gives a balanced picture of the latest theories and discoveries in keyboard music, of interest to both academic and performing musicians, and includes a new arrangement for keyboard of Bach's D minor Violin Partita, published here for the first time.

This is the first comprehensive historical and technological study of the pianoforte based on important primary source material. Most histories of the piano begin with its invention by Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence in about 1700: this study begins with the earliest fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscript sources and extends over Cristofori's rediscovery of the principle of the hammer action, the early exportation of Florentine pianofortes to prominent European courts, and the building of copies of these instruments in Portugal, Spain and Germany. Technical information is presented in a comparative format and the text is illustrated with many photographs, measurements, line drawings and tables. While written primarily for the technical specialist, there is much here of significance for the history of the piano and performance practice.