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“I think “Intimate Conversations” works well in the way I wrote it in my own vernacular and style in plain words where you don’t have to go the dictionary to understand what I’m saying. Several people have said to me they feel like they’re looking over my shoulder as I talk to these musicians. I do not look at these as conversations as interviews. We are conversing. It is a give and take, but not in arcane musical terminology, but in everyday words as understood by regular non-musically trained folks like myself. Some novels not really about anything meaningful, sell 100,000 copies. Books on classical musical sell way less. Yet, this book is about something important to all of us. It is about life and music, and whether they are the same. Last night I reread parts of “Intimate Conversations” about why music is so important in our lives anytime, but especially in bad times like now. I wrote the book because I want to share my wonderment of music with others, and the thrill of entering their world. As I reread my own book, I was sort of amazed I did it. It was like reading a book written by someone else. I said to myself, “I said that!” But I did it. It really is for all of you out there. If I’ve come to know some things about music, musicians, and life itself you want to know, then reading this book, you’ll know!”
I suppose I could have written this note telling you a little about the 21 world class musicians in the book, from Renee Fleming, John Harbison, Benjamin Zander, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Susan Graham, Ran Blake, and all those others. That would have been sort of boiler plate in light of what I chose to write above. As you listen to these podcasts you will hear a bit about each of them. If you read the book, you will learn lots more about each, what it is that makes each great, what lies deep in their psyches allowing them to create and play, and most of all why music is much more than about life, but is life itself!
People, always people