The internationally acclaimed, widely beloved flutist reflects on his storied career Sir James Galway is one of the top musicians of our time, with a dazzling career that has spanned five decades and many genres of music. Now he celebrates his seventieth birthday with a look back on his incredible career, during which he has traveled around the world many times over and made countless friends, including legends from the worlds of classical and popular music. He reflects on the challenges he faced coming from the poverty of working-class Belfast and making the decision to go solo as a flutist, as well as the triumphs as he made his way to the top of his profession. Offers a rare, personal glimpse at the life of a modern musical master whose work has ranged across the musical spectrum with collaborators as diverse as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chieftains, John Denver, and Pink Floyd Includes delightful stories from Galway's career of more than fifty years Shares the challenges of touring and of melding public and private life By turns witty and informative, engaging and inspiring, The Man with the Golden Flute is a captivating read for fans of Galway and his music.

Locked away in a tower by a witch, Green Golly spends her time learning how to play classical music on a golden flute.

The internationally acclaimed, widely beloved flutist reflects on his storied career Sir James Galway is one of the top musicians of our time, with a dazzling career that has spanned five decades and many genres of music. Now he celebrates his seventieth birthday with a look back on his incredible career, during which he has traveled around the world many times over and made countless friends, including legends from the worlds of classical and popular music. He reflects on the challenges he faced coming from the poverty of working-class Belfast and making the decision to go solo as a flutist, as well as the triumphs as he made his way to the top of his profession. Offers a rare, personal glimpse at the life of a modern musical master whose work has ranged across the musical spectrum with collaborators as diverse as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chieftains, John Denver, and Pink Floyd Includes delightful stories from Galway's career of more than fifty years Shares the challenges of touring and of melding public and private life By turns witty and informative, engaging and inspiring, The Man with the Golden Flute is a captivating read for fans of Galway and his music.

Who better to write an authoritative yet fascinating introduction to flute-playing than James Galway whose glittering career extends from the principal flute in the Berlin Philharmonic to the top of the international pop charts? He starts with the history of the flute -- believed to be the first and in its simplest form, the most basic of man's many melodic instruments: only singers have less paraphernalia between them and their listeners. You just put your lips to the flute and blow. Galway entrances with his tale of the flute's evolution from the basic recorder to the complex, beautiful instrument we know today. The author's unique advice and experience is brought to bear on the problems and techniques of learning, practising and playing -- in solo, ensemble, at home, in concert and in the recording studio. The flautist will find the specific advice Galway gives invaluable, while the non-flute player will gain an insight into the way the lovely sounds of the flute are produced. Both will be enthralled by detailed analyses of the author's favourite pieces, while he gives due attention to the whole gamut of the flute repertoire.

The internationally acclaimed, widely beloved flutist reflects on his storied career Sir James Galway is one of the top musicians of our time, with a dazzling career that has spanned five decades and many genres of music. Now he celebrates his seventieth birthday with a look back on his incredible career, during which he has traveled around the world many times over and made countless friends, including legends from the worlds of classical and popular music. He reflects on the challenges he faced coming from the poverty of working-class Belfast and making the decision to go solo as a flutist, as well as the triumphs as he made his way to the top of his profession. Offers a rare, personal glimpse at the life of a modern musical master whose work has ranged across the musical spectrum with collaborators as diverse as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chieftains, John Denver, and Pink Floyd Includes delightful stories from Galway's career of more than fifty years Shares the challenges of touring and of melding public and private life By turns witty and informative, engaging and inspiring, The Man with the Golden Flute is a captivating read for fans of Galway and his music.

As heard on NPR's This American Life “Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air “One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” —Christian Science Monitor A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief. On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.