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 enlarge | Author: Glenn Kurtz
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $7.92
You Save: $6.03 (43%)
New (40) Used (9) from $7.68
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 80194
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0307278751
Dewey Decimal Number: 787.87092
EAN: 9780307278753
ASIN: 0307278751
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Customer Reviews:
 "I thought I knew what the music should mean." February 11, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Glenn Kurtz's PRACTICING relates his story of how he unlearned this audacity of thinking he knew what "music should mean." After years of practicing as a boy and appearing on television, after attending and graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music, after a few years in Vienna, Kurtz's anticipated career as a classical guitarist frittered away into nothingness. "The guitar is just an instrument. Others had mastered it, overcome its technique and history to become performing musicians. But I would not." For a decade he didn't touch his guitar. Instead, he earned a doctorate in comparative literature and taught college. Then, one day he listened to tapes of his senior year performance and discovered more limitations in it than he had once thought: "Instead of playing the music, I'd strangled it." This freed him from his long paralysis of feeling a failure to again take his guitar in his hands and practice: "My first time through, I practiced badly, chasing an ideal that ruined music for me, turning what I had loved the most into torture. Now, I'm pursuing not an ideal but the reality of my own experience. I began to practice again because I felt I could do better this time."
PRACTICING alternates chapters that take us through a single present-day practice session and through recollections of Kurtz's musicianship until he quit after Vienna. If Kurtz's guitar playing even approached his talents as a writer, the author is doubly blessed. He conveys beautifully his development as he labored so intensely to reach the perfection his own expectations dangled out in front of him. He smoothly includes a short history of the guitar. He peels away the various methods -- some very inventive - his various music teachers used to draw whole, not mechanical or forced, music out of him. He lets us virtually sit with him in his San Francisco apartment as he progresses through three hours plus of scales, etudes, and scores. Nothing -- not even the length of his fingernails -- is neglected in his coverage of the subject of what it means to a musician -- even a lapsed one -- to practice and to perform: "Everything that practicing accumulates and protects, performance releases." Too often, the younger Kurtz saw himself falling short because he had a "fear of giving music away and having nothing left for myself." Yet, in a few golden passages, he does transform the relentless accumulation of his practices into a "powerful and expansive" fusing with an audience: "Concentrating as deeply and pleasurably as I ever had before in my life, I felt an utter ease in the performance, as if the notes in their vibrations created the physical space, the flow of time, and the relationships among us all."
Kurtz is perhaps still a perfectionist at heart. He does, after all inform us that "I began to practice again because I felt I could do better this time." But if he is, I hope this time his guitar will not be shoved into a closet again for another decade. I hope he will practice -- and perhaps even perform -- with less tension, less tightrope expectation.
Any musician, professional or amateur, will likely be enthralled by PRACTICING. It offers a plethora of ideas that can deepen anyone's practice. But one doesn't need to play an instrument to love this book. It's practically perfect.
 Good but not great February 3, 2008
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
I love the concept of a book about the love of the classical guitar, but the writing is what threw me off; it seems as though there is a lot of irrelevant information to fill pages. A lot of material is devoted to the history of the guitar, other classical guitar players, and the tranistions are sudden from subject to subject. If anything, the book almosts stresses that classical guitar playing is unapprecitated and laughed at among music critics. The author's frustration about the perceptions of playing the classical guitar left me feeling that it is nothing more than a hobby. It is apparent that the author is not a writer.
 A Good Performance January 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's very telling that this book suffers from the same flaw that the author attributes to his guitar playing - an inability or unwillingness to reveal himself and his emotions while performing. This book is generally well written and interesting to read, but it often feels like the author is holding something back from the reader. It is oddly organized and a number of interesting "loose threads" were never resolved. Nevertheless I'd recommend it to anyone that's interested in guitar playing particularly or living with an unfulfilled dream generally.
Dream a little dream October 8, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
If a dream can be achieved only through a grinding, soul-wrenching practice of every single element, every nuance of every ingredient of that dream, would you do that to arrive at the dream, to be the dream? From the outset, author Glenn Kurtz tempts the reader with his success as a young musician in an illustrative narrative that careens from his first tugs at the strings to his virtuoso performance at his senior recital at the New England Conservatory from where his dreams may come true. He survives the ordeal only to discover that his goal of becoming a concert soloist is unavailable. Try door number 3...
His memoir is appropriately self-centered yet provides us with enough background on his parents' concerns and his personal relationships with his competitive peers at the conservatory whom I imagine, haunt him to this day, to present a character with multi-dimensional facets. His dalliance with the opposite sex is very touching and in the context of his dream of becoming a successful performance artist, poignant.
Devastated from a disappointing sojourn in Europe, he leaves music to pursue other intellectual stimulations landing gigs in the world of words, and draws some fascinating parallels, which smell a bit like rationalizations. And in the closet sits the guitar. His rediscovery of music sans the dream of onstage glory is resonant with this reborn musician and will strike beautiful chords with anyone who has, or has considered reaching back through time to find what brings them happiness.
The daily grind that is a musician's practice regime is detailed with astonishing clarity. One day, the notes are there. Right where they should be. The next, gone. His only solace is to continue to pound away and re-find that clarity, that inner glory. Music is at once a wonderful form of outward expression and a series of callisthenic exercises in self-flagellation and Mr. Kurtz has given us reason to refresh our memories of what dreams are made of.
Returning To Music October 1, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Glenn Kurtz is a good writer and an excellent musician. This is a wonderful book for anyone who loves music. The author explores being a musician in a competitive society. You won't want to put the book down once you start reading. I bought 4 copies as birthday gifts for friends who are part-time musicians but wish they could play full time.
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