A is for Oboe: The Orchestra's Alphabet
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Two widely acclaimed poets--one a composer and classical pianist as well--have come together to create this extraordinary portrait of the orchestra in all of its richness and fascination, using the structure of the alphabet in a way that's entirely new and delightful. A is for the first note you hear as you take your seat in the concert hall, played by the headstrong oboe. B is for the bassoon, "the orchestra's jester, complaining impatiently through his nose." And C is for the conductor, "like the captain on the bridge of a great ship, navigating the composer's musical charts."
Onward the text goes, soaring in reverie and making thought-provoking observations while not taking itself too seriously--illuminating all the various details that flow together to create the nourishing experience of playing or listening to music.
Lera Auerbach
Lera Auerbach is a poet and writer whose work brings literature and music into a single artistic vision. Writing in both English and Russian, she has formed a body of work shaped by formal freedom and a voice unmistakably her own. Her writing returns to memory, time, loss, and the inward life with rare intensity and precision. In her work, the intimate opens into the vast, and personal experience becomes inseparable from the deeper continuities of culture and consciousness.
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Marilyn Nelson
Marilyn Nelson is the author of Carver: A Life in Poems and Fields of Praise. She has won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, a Newbery Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor. Marilyn lives in Storrs, Connecticut, where she is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut.
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