Fifty five years after it was first released, the best-selling Know About Jazz compendium is being re-released as an Ebook by G2. Written by Peter Clayton, who from October 1968 until his death in August 1991, presented jazz recordings, interviews, studio performances, and live performances on BBC Radio 1, 2, and 3, as well as the BBC World Service; and Peter Gammond, author of more than 50 books on music, who is now 93 years-old and living with his wife Anna in Shepperton, where they list...

British musicals have been wowing audiences since the 1700s. They have the power to produce tears of sadness and joy, to enrapture audiences with spellbinding songs and treat them to the most spectacular and magical moments ever to be seen on stage. This lovingly crafted book explores the history, the drama and the story behind our most famous shows, ranging from the longest running, such as Phantom of the Opera, to one of the most financially successful, Les Miserables, and those that wil...

Selected poems of author and musician Peter Gammond

Though first published in 1987, the Duke's music is timeless, and this excellent book, written by musicologist Peter Gammond, is now available as a modestly priced ebook. With numerous black & white historic photos, the readable narrative provides a chronological history of Duke Ellington's musical career starting as a part time pianist at Washington's Poodle Dog Cafe up to his death in 1974. But with its alphabetic list of all the sideman who ever worked with the Duke together with a deta...

Franz Schubert was born on January 31 1797 and lived in Vienna, the cultural hub of Europe at a time of continuous political and intellectual upheaval. Schubert himself, however, preferred a secluded existence in drawing-rooms and coffee houses with his literary and artistic friends. He did not have the advantages of an academic background or of rich patronage and consequently he was never well off and suffered great neglect in his lifetime. His health deteriorated and he died before his 3...

This eBook version of musicologist Peter Gammond's best-selling biography of the German-French composer Offenbach ties in with the 200th anniversary of his birth in June 2019. Composer, cellist and impresario of the romantic period, Offenbach is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. Author Peter Gammond, himself 93, commented: "Nothing will shake my belief that Offenbach's music with its magical mixture of vivacity and t...

The Little Book of Betjeman is a perceptive evocation of the late Poet Laureate's life and work. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout, in both colour and black and white, with some hitherto unpublished pictures of the poet and many very rate first editions from the author's personal collection. Peter Gammond knew John Betjeman and the members of his circle of friends at Oxford, such as Maurice Bowra, and, as Vice-Chairman and a former Chairman of The Betjeman Society, he is uniquely...

One Man's Music is a love story - the story of Peter Gammond's relationship with music from earliest childhood. The growth of the relationship is, has been - and still is - deltaic, branching out through every phase and aspect of Western European and North American music: classical, light, jazz and even pop. Despite its range and depth, the book is not the least degree a textbook or scholarly treatise. But is: HISTORICAL neither formally nor chronologically but ranging through the key deve...

'They are not for you but for a later age!' Ludwig van Beethoven, on the Opus 59 quartets.Tackling the Beethoven quartets is a rite of passage that has shaped the Takács Quartet's work together for over forty years. Using the history of the composition and first performances of the quartets as the backbone to his story, Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács since 1993 - recounts the life of the Quartet from its inception in Hungary, through emigration to the US a...

A newbie's comprehensive guide to the joys of classical music, including introductions to forty of its greatest composers.Musical tastes may change, but the great classical composers maintain a devoted fan base—for centuries. For anyone who's interested in classical music but finds it a bit intimidating or confusing, passionate fan and former music-industry executive Ian Christians has developed a unique approach to the genre, designed to make it as easy as possibl...

'Fascinating ... Composer Andrew Gant is a masterful guide, introducing readers to the major players and key themes of an entrancing topic.' BBC History MagazineWhether you prefer Baroque or pop, Theremins or violins, the music you love and listen to shapes your world. But what shaped the music?Ranging across time and space, this book takes us on a grand musical tour from music's origins in prehistory right up to the twenty-first century. Charting ...

Beethoven bestrides the history of music like no other. Without him it would have been a very different story. This biographical portrait reveals a titanic personality, both vulnerable and belligerent, comic and tragic, and above all heroic, as he comes to grips with perhaps the greatest disability a musician can suffer. No mans music is more universal; few mens lives are more inspiring. Yet almost every work was the result of passionate struggle. In every sense but one his modest height he...