Here are 88 books that The Music in George's Head fans have personally recommended if you like
The Music in George's Head.
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I have loved music since childhood. I grew up on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. My loving, hard-working parents gave my three brothers and me the best life possible. I began singing at our little Chewton Christian Church when asked to do so. Piano lessons began, and for 12 years, my sweet teacher, Joann Thurston, taught me piano, but I realized my true love was singing. She always allowed me to sing as well as play the piano. I attended Westminister College, majoring in elementary education with a music minor. Following graduation, my first job was teaching music to 1500 schoolchildren in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Children must have fun while being introduced to classical music. This book introduces children to classical music and the magical keyboard. As Rowan Baker suggests it is important to first have the child listen to an excerpt of the original instrumental piece before playing the melody on the keyboard.
Jessica Tickles illustrations are delightful and a child’s attention is drawn to them as the original piece is played. I believe the magical keyboard is a jumping-off place for more stimulating activities while teaching classical music to young children.
From the The Story Orchestra series, a beautifully illustrated first piano sound book! Press the keys to learn 8 famous classical tunes from the story books.
While other books in the series play famous pieces of classical music, in this new Story Orchestra title, young readers can now play the tunes themselves!
Color and shape codes correspond to the 14 keys, so kids can learn easy 8-bar, one-finger melodies, so even the youngest child can learn to play music with this simple method. For best results, playing readers the original piece first is recommended so children can familiarise themselves with…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
I have loved music since childhood. I grew up on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. My loving, hard-working parents gave my three brothers and me the best life possible. I began singing at our little Chewton Christian Church when asked to do so. Piano lessons began, and for 12 years, my sweet teacher, Joann Thurston, taught me piano, but I realized my true love was singing. She always allowed me to sing as well as play the piano. I attended Westminister College, majoring in elementary education with a music minor. Following graduation, my first job was teaching music to 1500 schoolchildren in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The author, Mike Venezia, believes in having fun. If you want to introduce children to composers and music, make it fun for them. While reading the delightful, imaginative story about Aaron Copland play compositions such as Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Fanfare for the Common Man.
Mike Venezia has a very interesting, engaging way of introducing art, inventions, and period photography. Visual images bring his numerous children’s classical music books alive. He makes his composers become real people, like you and me.
I have loved music since childhood. I grew up on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. My loving, hard-working parents gave my three brothers and me the best life possible. I began singing at our little Chewton Christian Church when asked to do so. Piano lessons began, and for 12 years, my sweet teacher, Joann Thurston, taught me piano, but I realized my true love was singing. She always allowed me to sing as well as play the piano. I attended Westminister College, majoring in elementary education with a music minor. Following graduation, my first job was teaching music to 1500 schoolchildren in Blacksburg, Virginia.
This book encourages readers to travel through the ages with our most famous classical composers, big bands, jazz, and popular music innovators. It introduces the reader to time periods beginning with primitive man and ending with the Beatles arriving at Buckingham Palace to receive honors from the Queen of England. Tidbits of information are gleaned as one progresses from page to page through the periods.
Piero Ventura’s fascinating art helps us visualize everyday life and gain insight into our most famous composers. One can almost see the composers walking the streets, attending opening night concerts, operas, and ballets while showing us they were real people, just like us. One never knows what influence these great composers or any one of us might have on society from generation to generation.
The internationally acclaimed artist and author has created a work that helps teach young people about the world's greatest composers and describes the history of music from primitive rhythms to the era of the classical masters
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
I have loved music since childhood. I grew up on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. My loving, hard-working parents gave my three brothers and me the best life possible. I began singing at our little Chewton Christian Church when asked to do so. Piano lessons began, and for 12 years, my sweet teacher, Joann Thurston, taught me piano, but I realized my true love was singing. She always allowed me to sing as well as play the piano. I attended Westminister College, majoring in elementary education with a music minor. Following graduation, my first job was teaching music to 1500 schoolchildren in Blacksburg, Virginia.
I believe in starting things early! Children can latch onto creative ideas oh so quickly. Don’t ever think they cannot understand and love Shakespeare. Like most all things, if presented in a creative, interesting, stimulating way, children jump right into the ebb and flow of a story and are carried away as they engage their imagination.
Lois Burdett presents Shakespeare in such a compelling way. Children want to dress and pretend to become Romeo, Juliet, Lady and Lord Capulet, and the Montagues. Engage your children today in this delightful book with drawings created by children.
For more than 20 years, Lois Burdett has been introducing Shakespeare to primary school pupils. Working with her students, many as young as seven, she makes Shakespeare's plays come wonderfully alive for young eyes and ears. The texts are rewritten as simple rhyming verse and illustrated by her pupils' own lively colour illustrations of the characters and the action. Her books and workshops for teachers have captured the attention and imagination of parents, educators, and lovers of Shakespeare around the world.
I am an award-winning composer, author, and educator. Since 1990 I have had the privilege of teaching others about music through my concerts, children’s books, academic books, lessons, and online courses.
In the Once Upon a Masterpiece series, author Anna Harwell Celenza tells the stories behind various classical music masterpieces. She does so in an engaging way for children ages 6-9. I love how she is a musicologist and uses documented evidence to tell the story behind the piece. The illustrations incorporate folk art and symbols from the composer’s country. The author includes multiple links so that readers can listen to each masterpiece.
When his friend Victor suddenly dies, composer Mussorgsky is deeply saddened. But, with the help of his friends, and through his own music, Modest finds a way to keep Victor's spirit alive.
Readers of all ages will enjoy the inspirational story behind the composition of Pictures at an Exhibition. Bright, colorful illustrations incorporate elements of Russian folk art and traditional symbols. View pages from artist JoAnn Kitchel's notebook for explanations of the symbols and see her pencil-sketch research of the Russian culture.
I am an award-winning composer, author, and educator. Since 1990 I have had the privilege of teaching others about music through my concerts, children’s books, academic books, lessons, and online courses.
This book is from a series of books entitled Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Composers, which features many different composers. The books are easy to read and will be enjoyed by both younger readers and older readers alike. The cartoon-style artwork may look silly, but the material is informative. Music education would not be complete without some information on the composers who wrote the music. A great series!
I am Frederick L. McKay, the youngest son of the composer and author George Frederick McKay (1899-1970), and I have re-issued and edited Professor McKay’s theory books and also authored his biography titled McKay’s Music: The Composer Chronicles. George Frederick McKay hoped to have more American music performed in the concert halls of our country and also involved cultural elements from around the world in his musical works, including poetry and whimsical pieces for young people studying music. His other works include Creative Harmony, How Music Begins and Grows, and Workbook for Creative Orchestration.
Penrod reminded the composer of the many adventures he had as a young boy along with his friends in the early decades of the 20th century.
McKay remembered when he helped the son of a doctor who was a boyhood friend as they made placebos for the doctor's practice out of bread and water in the basement of the doctor's home. He also recalled street fights with other boys that did not always turn out well for undersized kids but were considered sporting in those times in frontier towns.
A timeless novel in the spirited tradition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn One of the most popular American authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Pulitzer Prize winner Booth Tarkington was acclaimed for his novels set in small Midwestern towns. Penrod tells of a boy growing up in Indianapolis at the turn of the twentieth century. His friends and his dog accompany him on his many jaunts, from the stage as the Child Sir Lancelot, to the playground, to school. They make names for themselves as bad boys who always have the most fun.…
I am J.R. Hoyle Chair of Music at the University of Sheffield, UK, elected life member of the Academy for Mozart Research at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and current President of the Royal Musical Association, and I have been writing about Mozart’s life and music for more than 25 years. Across five monographs, my interests have broadened from Mozart’s piano concertos, to stylistic issues in his Viennese instrumental music, to biographical, philological, reception- and performance-related topics in the Requiem and the last decade of his life in general, and (most recently) to a comparative study of his and contemporary Joseph Haydn’s reception in the long nineteenth century.
This is without doubt the greatest Mozart biography of the twentieth century, building directly on the foundation of the nineteenth century’s most important biography (by Otto Jahn).
Abert’s momentous work, exhaustive, incisive, well informed and opinionated in turn, is expertly translated and edited in this eminently readable volume.
Hermann Abert's classic biography, first published in German more than eighty years ago and itself based on the definitive mid-nineteenth century study by Otto Jahn, remains the most informed and substantial biography of Mozart in any language. The book is both the fullest account of the composer's life and a deeply skilled analysis of his music. Proceeding chronologically from 1756 to 1791, the book interrogates every aspect of Mozart's life, influences, and experience; his personality; his religious and secular dimensions; and the social context of the time. In "a book within a book," Abert also provides close scrutiny of the…
As the Director of the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University, I’m excited to stay on top of all that’s being done in the field of Texas Music and let me assure you that it is a great way to spend one’s days. Texas music and culture reflect the state’s diverse and contested past, and every month, it seems that there is not only a new artist appearing on the stage to sing her or his truth but a writer helping us to understand how those truths fit into the larger narratives of Texas history.
This is one of the books that had me inserting an unsolicited “did you know that...” into just about every conversation I had while reading it. Terry Allen is a singular visual and musical artist whose story exemplifies what a rich and contrarian place Texas is.
I knew something of what I might find in a Terry Allen biography, and yet there’s so much more: 1950s Lubbock wrestling promoters and Thai psychedelic bands, David Byrne and Marcel Duchamp, and, most compellingly, the lifelong love of partners Terry and Jo Harvey Allen. I cannot imagine many authors up for the task.
Brendan Greaves expertly delivers as one of those rare characters who understands that Allen’s roles in fine art and country music are not only on equal footing but of a piece. Greaves also oversaw the masterful reissue of Allen’s iconic albums Juarez and Lubbock on Everything, which makes it all…
Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Allen himself, his family members (including actor and poet Jo Harvey Allen, his wife and artistic partner of more than sixty years), and his many notable friends, colleagues, and collaborators (from musicians like David Byrne and Kurt Vile to artists such as Bruce Nauman and Kiki Smith); full access to the artist's home, studio, and voluminous journals and archives; and over twenty years of collaboration and friendship with Allen, author Brendan Greaves limns a revealing portrait, as deeply researched as it is intimate, as provocative as it is poetic, of a singularly multivalent storyteller…
It was not hard to grow up Goth in an old farmhouse in Norfolk, one of the most haunted counties in England. Age 11, when the Eighties began, I genuinely believed that ghosts, witches, and a demon dog called Old Shuck stalked this land. John Peel's radio show kept the night terrors at bay and replaced them with the music that became my passion. By 19, I was writing for Sounds and would meet and work with many of the bands and artists who saw me through that dread decade. Forty years on, this is my love letter to a most maligned and misunderstood genre – and why it still matters.
The Manchester evoked by Joy Division and Barry Adamson's first band, Magazine, also entered the Eighties a ravaged post-industrial city, strafed first by the Luftwaffe and then its own planners, who erected Brutalist estates over its Victorian past.
The son of a white Mancunian mother and black Jamaican father, Adamson grew up in some of the worst of the city's social housing in the Hulme of the Sixties. Another Selby aficionado, Barry recounts the story his challenging childhood with a picaresque, magical realist flair.
Music offers both salvation and damnation – as he progresses through Magazine and into Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, so too do all his most self-sabotaging addictions, until death brings a reckoning and a salvation in the first fruit of his solo career, the LP Moss Side Story.
In Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars, the enigmatic Barry Adamson shines a probing light into his own heart of darkness.
Born in the black and white world of post-industrial Manchester, Adamson saw music as a chance to turn his world technicolour. Propelled into punk via Magazine, he was the founding bass player in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, before stumbling too far down a dark, drug-induced path.
Unflinchingly candid, Adamson steers the reader through a mix of harrowing, tragic, funny and often life-affirming straights. Throughout it all, music - be it bass lines, melodies or film…
