Title: Bone over Ivory: Essays of a Standing PianistAuthor(s) Jack Kohl
Published by: The Pauktaug PressPraise for Jack Kohl and Bone over Ivory
“With wit, sophistication, and a welcome lack of pretention, Jack Kohl takes us on a Cook’s tour of how literature and music can intersect. His love of the classics—be they literary or musical—shows through on every page, and his ways of associating what he plays with what he reads is quite remarkable. Perhaps no musician since Ives himself has written so movingly of why Transcendentalism still matters. Performing musicians as well as students of American literature will adore this pithy offering on the altar of art.”
—Philip F. Gura, author of American Transcendentalism: A History
“If Ralph Waldo Emerson had been trained as a classical musician instead of a theologian, he might have written much as Jack Kohl does. Kohl runs marathons, falls in love, walks on beaches, writes novels, but in these intimate essays his universal impulses get expressed through metaphors shaped by the visceral feel of fingers touching keys and ears piecing together melodies. When he compares running through the woods at night to piano playing because the roots of trees feel like black keys to the feet, you realize that we musicians process the world in a different modality.”
—Kyle Gann, author of Charles Ives’s Concord: Essays after a Sonata
“Henry David Thoreau, who Jack Kohl references many times in Bone over Ivory, asked “What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps?” The same question can be asked about good writing about music. Kohl’s seven essays form a tone poem supporting two main themes: music and the musician (in this case the author himself), art and the artist. And though, like in any good tone poem, the parts may be brilliant on their own, together, as a whole, they shine. Bone over Ivory tickles like music itself. Read it and listen. And then go play your favorite piece of music.”
—Jeffrey S. Cramer, editor of The Portable Thoreau
“Jack Kohl writes about music and performance with a dry wit - a rare thing these days - embroidering his wry, pianistic observations on life and even love, with Dickensian syntax and a sprightly turn of phrase, that is rather endearing in today’s bankrupt age of Twitteresque banality.”
—Brendan G. Carroll, Author of The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold
“It’s wonderful to read Jack Kohl’s beautifully crafted prose. I’m particularly biased, of course, to ‘A Transcendentalist’s Love Story,’ that uses Boston’s iconic Parker House as a setting!”
—Susan Wilson, House Historian, Omni Parker House
“Author-pianist Jack Kohl brings together his mastery of classical piano repertoire and his love of fine prose to create a rare marriage of two art forms. Reading him is an exciting intellectual experience.”
—Michael Johnson, Author of Portraitures and Caricatures: Conductors, Pianists, Composers
“Jack Kohl writes with a rare sensitivity, elegance, and intellect, revealing a deep understanding of the piano and its literature, and an appreciation of the curious hold this instrument has over those of us who play it.”
—Frances Wilson, pianist and writer; “The Cross-Eyed Pianist”
Jack Kohl is a pianist and author living and working in the greater New York City area. He is the author of The Pauktaug Trilogy. Please visit the author’s website: www.jacksonkohl.com
Front cover artist Freiman Stoltzfus is a Pennsylvania native and lifelong artist. His work has been exhibited and collected in North America, Europe, and Asia. His inspirations include architecture, music, sacred geometry, and floral life. He currently owns and operates two galleries in Pennsylvania. Visit www.freimanstoltzfus.com
ISBN13: 978-057847354
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