How Can We Keep from Singing celebrates singing and the creative spirit. How Can We Keep from Singing celebrates singing and the creative spirit.

How Can We Keep from Singing, celebrates singing and the creative spirit. Joan Oliver Goldmsith

HOW CAN WE KEEP FROM SINGING:
Music and the
Passionate Life

    by Joan Oliver
   Goldsmith
    Pub. by W.W. Norton
    also available through
    Penguin Canada
    Publicity: Elizabeth Garriga
    (212) 790-4295
    egarriga@wwnorton.com

How Can We Keep From Singing: Music and the Passionate Life

"For anyone who practices an activity simply for the love of it, this is an important, affirming book."
-Natalie Goldberg,author of Writing Down the Bones

"Singing for your life is what Goldsmith's book is all about. Read it and sing!"
- Bobby McFerrin, vocalist and conductor

How Can We Keep from Singing celebrates singing and the creative spirit. It explores how making music – indeed, all creative work – can provide source material for making a passionate, committed life.

"Goldsmith offers a paean to the creative spirit" [and to] 'The passionate, committed, talented, frequently unpaid or underpaid workers who make possible the great things in life.' " Kirkus Reviews

How Can We Keep from Singing explores the life of the committed musicians who sing Beethoven's 9th at Orchestra Hall, but may never sing a starring role at the Met. The book brings the reader behind the scenes of a symphonic chorus, and then inside the music itself, to share the physical joys of making harmonious sound, and the sensual pleasures of hearing it.

“Goldsmith conducts you gracefully among the surprisingly connected worlds of commerce, music, and spiritual discovery, leaving you with a precious recognition: you need never live a divided life again. Music powers all.” Kim Stafford, author of Having Everything Right.

In the experience of making music, the book finds insight – about making mistakes, about courage and difficulty, about teaching, friendship, self-knowledge and the essential elements of creativity.

Finding the range in which it is most comfortable to sing can tell us how to find our home in other areas of life and work. By observing conductors – today and throughout history – we learn about leadership. But we also explore the largely unappreciated art of great "followership" – an art essential not only to choral singing, but also to human enterprises ranging from succeeding in kindergarten to building a company.

Above all, How Can We Keep from Singing advocates that we listen to ourselves, and not hold back in playing the "invisible instrument" of creativity – whether in writing poetry, starting a business, restoring old cars, planting a garden, or singing a good old song.

"Goldsmith’s words soar, growl, cry and whisper. And they inspire. . . “ Publishers Weekly, starred review

How Can We Keep from Singing: Music and the Passionate Life celebrates singing and the creative spirit in all of us.