The Blue Piano and Other Stories

by Carol Montparker

Overview

(Amadeus). Carol Montparker's 31 stories are remarkable for their frankness and emotional honesty. Creative nonfiction from a life in music, they are in turn tender and intense, lyrical and riotously funny. There is a poignant friendship with the elderly, irresistible Rudi; the anguish of a marriage that needed to end; true love found later; a narrow escape from an outlandishly surreal piano; moving tales from her teaching studio; each story with its own satisfying shape and rhythm. "These autobiographical stories sparkle with vignettes of people, places and petss, but their deeper subject is that of the woman pianist in a male-dominated worlld. The subject is not new, but Ms. Montparker brings to it a rewarding freshnesss of insight." Jerome Lowenthal Pianist; and faculty, The Juilliard School "Thee pianist's latest book deserves to be read by anyone who plays or wishes to playy or ever wished to play the piano, and by everyone else too. She writes about muusic in a sane, wise, humane voice in this charming, instructive, often moving coollection." Michael Kimmelman Chief Art Critic, The New York Times ; and pianiist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781574670875
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/01/2004
Series:	Amadeus
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Carol Montparker is a pianist and writer. As an editor of Clavier magazine for over twenty years, Montparker has written over 200 feature articles and interviews of world-famous concert artists, along with her regular column, “Carillon ” a personal view of music, and how it relates to the other arts, nature, and all of life. Carol Montparker is a Steinway Artist and continues to perform both solo and chamber music. Her CD, Pianogarden, has been praised by artists and critics. Montparker maintains and enjoys an active teaching studio in her residence in Huntington, Long Island, where she lives with her husband, Ernest Taub.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	9
	Preface	11
	The Great Pianist	15
	The Island	21
	Polly and the Piano	36
	Paris	41
	Mazurka in the Bronx	52
	The Special Charms of an Old Man	58
	My Birds	77
	Summer Fest	83
	Rubinstein, Michelangelo, and Ernest	90
	Greta's Melody	94
	Healing House	97
	CD Collection	107
	Mozart, the Starlings, and My Trigger Finger	114
	The Blue Piano	123
	Suffering Indignities	128
	Brooklyn	136
	The Best Journal	146
	Portrait at the Piano	155
	The Green Bowl	161
	The Lost Concert	166
	From the Porch	171
	Diverse and Controversial Uses of the Indispensable Black Marker	177
	An Evening with Beethoven	185
	Rondo in the Rubble	189
	My New York	195
	"Why Do You Keep Calling My Mother 'Dorothy'?"	202
	Ryan's Awakening	211
	Break a Leg!	216
	A Mother's Sacrifice	220
	Copying Calder	231
	Alife	236

Editorial Reviews

She once had a promising career as a concert pianist, but Montparker (A Pianist's Landscape) decided to scale back on performing and to free herself from the pressures and anxieties of a touring musician's life. Although the piano is still the focus of her existence, and she still gives recitals from time to time, she is now able to pursue other activities; in these engaging personal essays, which she calls stories, she muses on some of these interests, such as her writing and painting, her garden, the birds in her backyard, her diaries and her travels. Montparker also reminisces about her childhood in Brooklyn; some of the many friends she has made over the years, including a charming elderly gentleman who managed to pass along to her his deceased wife's Steinway piano without making it look like a gift; her disastrous first marriage; and the happiness she has found with a second husband who shares her interests. Music plays the central role in her stories, however. She writes beautifully about the pianos she has owned and played (or not played, as in the tale of the gaudy blue piano of the title, which she refused to use for a recital at Steinway Hall), the perils of giving concerts in small towns, the revitalizing power of music after the tragedy of September 11 and her affection for all her students. Montparker's essays are slight, but they speak delightfully of the contentment of a musician who has never regretted her decision to trade a taxing career for full enjoyment of life's other pleasures. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly