Singing Body and Soul is for the young singer, to help you discover how your voice, body and mind work together. There are great books about the links between science and music - but most are written for adults with strong music backgrounds, and college degrees. Young singers need a streamlined version so your voice can express your inner life - right now! The voice has the most exciting sound when a singer is between 20 to 25 years old. Thats when desire starts to ride on the sound, and helps you stand out at an audition. By then, you already need years of singing experience - to make the most of your opportunities. That means learning about your voice early - at 14 years old or younger. Singing - Body and Soul offers new guidance for developing your singing. It includes artistic and scientific descriptions, and uses song lyrics to illustrate states of mind. Musical Theater plots, characters, and songs fill the book, so the text is more storytelling than classroom lecture. With quotes and references from Charlie Brown, Albert Einstein, and Dr. Seuss, Singing - Body and Soul can help you understand your voice in new ways, and make the world hear what you have to say.

Singing with Mind, Body, and Soul is unique in that it truly is a practical guide for voice teachers, singers, and choral conductors alike. It outlines in a clear and straightforward way the fundamentals of a healthy vocal technique. Step-by-step tools and exercises are used to achieve a solid, healthy vocal production. Included in each chapter are specific exercises for increasing kinesthetic awareness while singing. The tools, used together with the exercises, retrain the muscles and allow the vocal mechanism to release tension, at the same time keeping energy and vitality in the voice. Singing with Mind, Body, and Soul offers to both singer and teacher a comprehensive guide for beautiful, healthy, soulful singing.

This saga of a son of the working class who grows into a piano prodigy is “hypnotically readable . . . The best story I know of in a long, long time” (Vanity Fair). As a boy, Claude Rawlings looks up through the grated window of his basement apartment to watch the world go by. Poor, lonely, supported by a taxi-driver mother whose eccentricities spin more and more out of control, he faces the terrible task of growing up on the margins of life, destined to be a spectator of that great world always hurrying out of reach. But there is an out-of-tune piano in the small apartment, and in unlocking the secrets of its keys, as if by magic, Claude discovers himself. He is a musical prodigy. Body & Soul is the story of a young man whose life is transformed by a gift. The gift is not without price—the work is relentless, the teachers exacting—but the reward is a journey that takes him to the drawing rooms of the rich and powerful, private schools, a gilt-edged marriage, and Carnegie Hall. Claude moves through this life as if he were playing a difficult composition, swept up in its drama and tension, surprised by its grace notes. Music, here, becomes a character in its own right, equaled in strength only by the music of Frank Conroy’s own unmistakable and true voice. Bristling with character and invention, Body & Soul is Dickensian in its range and richness. This is a novel with all the emotional appeal and moral gravity of a classic bildungsroman, but with a tone as contemporary as a jazz riff—an unforgettable achievement by one of the great writers of our time.

Dating back to 1785, the Moravian “Instructions for the Choir Helpers” contain detailed advice for the spiritual counselors of the men, women, and children in Moravian congregations on how to address concerns about one’s body and soul. In this volume, Katherine Faull presents an annotated, translated edition of the original German manuscript. In monthly “speakings”—regularly scheduled dialogues between the choir helper and individual church members to determine whether the congregant could be admitted to communion—men and women received spiritual guidance on topics as varied as the physical manifestations of puberty, sexual attraction, frequency of intercourse, infant care, and bereavement. From their founding in 1722, the Moravians were remarkable for their positive evaluation of the body; they held that the natural manifestations of masculinity and femininity were integral elements of spiritual consciousness. The “Instructions for the Choir Helpers”—which were highly confidential at the time and passed on only by permission of the church administration—reflect that philosophy, providing insights into an interpretation of the body as a holistic system that should be cared for as a vessel for the spirit. A unique resource for scholars of religious history, gender studies, and colonial American church history, Faull’s translation of this fascinating set of documents provides an unprecedented glimpse into a period of foundational change in Moravian history.

The legendary singer and recording artist shares his life story including his many triumphs and tragedies.

A gripping narrative that captures the tumult and liberating energy of a nation in transition, Sweet Soul Music is an intimate portrait of the legendary performers--Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Al Green among them--who merged gospel and rhythm and blues to create Southern soul music. Through rare interviews and with unique insight, Peter Guralnick tells the definitive story of the songs that inspired a generation and forever changed the sound of American music.