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Showing 1 - 20 of 2392 items
Stormy weather: the life of Lena Horne
By James Gavin. 2009
Biography of African American singer/actress Lena Horne, born in 1917 Brooklyn, who first performed at Harlem's Cotton Club at age…
sixteen. Interprets Horne's multiracial family background in the pre-civil rights era as the reason for emotional conflicts in both her personal and professional lives. Some strong language and some descriptions of sex. c2009.Sir Ernest MacMillan: the importance of being Canadian
By Ezra Schabas. 1994
A biography of the famous Canadian conductor, composer, and organist, Sir Ernest MacMillan. MacMillan conducted the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from…
1931-1956, and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir from 1942-1957. Schabas traces MacMillan's continued commitment to his country and music throughout his life. c1994.Sisters in the wilderness: the lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill
By Charlotte Gray. 1999
Sisters Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill came to Canada with their husbands in the early 1800s. Both women recorded…
their experiences as pioneers in the new country in books that would later be held up as early examples of Canadian literature. Here, Gray sheds light on what their lives were like in relation to each other, in relation to their families, and in relation to the harsh environment that surrounded them every day. 1999.Randy Bachman: takin' care of business
By John Einarson, Randy Bachman. 2000
A biography of rock guitarist Randy Bachman, from his early days in Winnipeg, to his years with the Guess Who…
and BTO. A songwriter, producer, guitarist, and session player, Bachman has played an integral role in the evolution and growth of the Canadian music industry. Some strong language. 2000.My life on earth & elsewhere
By R. Murray Schafer. 2012
A memoir by the internationally-acclaimed Canadian composer, music educator and writer R. Murray Schafer, traces the author's life and growth…
as an artist from his earliest memories to the present. Scenes from his youth as an aspiring painter, a music student at the University of Toronto and a sailor on a Great Lakes freighter give way to memories of his several years of work and wandering in Europe, where he gained a deeper understanding of his vocation, and found, especially in Greece, the inspiration for much of the astonishing music he would create after his return to Canada. 2012.Lightfoot
By Nicholas Jennings. 2017
Takes us deep inside Gordon Lightfoot’s world, from his idyllic childhood in Orillia, the wild sixties, and his canoe trips…
into Canada’s North to his heady times atop the music world. Jennings explores the toll that success took on his personal life - including his troubled relationships, his battle with alcohol and his near-death experiences - and the extraordinary drive and tenacity that pulled him through it all. Rich in voices from fellow musicians, close friends, Lightfoot’s family and the singer’s own reminiscences, the biography tells the stories behind some of his best-known love songs, including “Beautiful” and “Song for a Winter’s Night,” as well as the infidelity and divorce that resulted in classics like “Sundown” and “If You Could Read My Mind.” Bestseller. 2017.Learning to fly: the autobiography
By Victoria Beckham. 2002
Jean Langlais: the man and his music (Amadeus Ser.)
By Ann Labounsky. 2000
Authorized biography of blind twentieth-century organist/composer Jean Langlais (1907-1991) by organist/music scholar Labounsky. Discusses Langlais's training at France's National Institute…
for the Blind, his subsequent organist position at Paris's Sainte-Clotilde, his American tours, and his instrumental, choral, and vocal compositions. Some descriptions of sex. 2000.In my own key: my life in love and music
By Liona Boyd. 1998
Boyd tells of her glamourous life as a world-renowned classical guitarist. She travels around the world and spends time with…
the leaders of the world's most powerful countries. She also has an affair with former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau before she finally settles down to enjoy married life. 1998.Catch a wave: the rise, fall & redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson
By Peter Ames Carlin. 2006
Using first-person interviews and unreleased recording-session transcriptions, former People magazine writer analyzes the life of Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson.…
Describes the Wilson brothers' emotional abuse at the hands of their father, Brian's descent into depression, and his comeback with the 2004 album Smile. Some strong language. 2006.Cigar box banjo: notes on music and life
By Paul Quarrington. 2010
Paul Quarrington had a favourite recording as a kid: a boy fashions a banjo from a cigar box, sets off…
for a contest in the next town, and wins with a song that weaves in the sounds he hears along the way. As a grown-up writer and musician, Quarrington still loved the tale. And after he learned he had stage IV lung cancer, the story took on a whole new meaning for him. Cigar Box Banjo tracks a life lived in music and words. Some people with a terminal illness find mountains to climb; Quarrington decides to go out singing. 2010.Ghost rider: travels on the healing road
By Neil Peart. 2002
After the deaths of his daughter and then his common-law wife, musician Neil Peart got on his motorcycle and drove…
for over a year, traveling Canada, the U.S. and Central America. The need to do something, to move, kept Neil going and pushed him toward healing. 2002.From this moment on
By Shania Twain. 2011
Forty-five-year-old Grammy-Award-winning Canadian singer Shania Twain details her impoverished childhood, her mother and stepfather’s tumultuous relationship and their accidental deaths…
when Shania was twenty-two, and the painful betrayal in her own first marriage two decades later. Discusses relishing her career, second marriage, and role as a mother. Strong language. Bestseller. 2011.Getting out of here alive: the ballad of Murray McLauchlan
By Murray McLauchlan. 1998
In this autobiography, Murray McLauchlan writes about growing up in Toronto in the fifties, rising to prominence as a songwriter…
in 1968 with "Child's song", and the three decades of his career as a singer-songwriter in Canada. He tells the story of his return to the working-class town of Paisley in Scotland to visit the very room in which he had been born, and his visits to the ruined McLauchlan castle and the battlefields at Culloden, in an attempt to find his own place within a long and tumultuous clan history. 1998.Glenn Gould (Extraordinary Canadians)
By Mark Kingwell. 2009
The author regards Glenn Gould as an innovative thinker whose ideas about music governed his life. But those ideas were…
contradictory, mischievous, deliberately provocative. Just as Gould played twenty-one “takes” to record the opening aria in his famed 1955 Goldberg Variations, Kingwell offers twenty-one takes on Gould’s life, each offering a different interpretation of the man. 2012, c2009.Cash: the autobiography
By Johnny Cash, Patrick Carr. 1998
The country-western star relates his life in rural Arkansas as a boy picking cotton, his early career, and his continual…
concert touring. Chronicles his ups and downs with amphetamine addiction and his various rehabilitation attempts, and describes his homes in Tennessee, Florida, and Jamaica. Includes a discography. Some strong language. 1998.Anti diva: an autobiography
By Carole Pope. 2000
Throughout her career, Carole Pope has blazed a trail for the diva and anti-diva in all of us, and here…
she offers a no-holds-barred look at her adventures in the music scene - on the concert stage, in the recording studio, and in the bedroom. Known for ushering Canada from the punk movement of the 1970s to the new wave sound of the 1980s with her band Rough Trade, she candidly shares her thoughts on AIDS, sexuality and sexual politics, and the new breed of music divas that dominate the charts today. Strong language and explicit descriptions of sex. 2000.All the way: a biography of Frank Sinatra
By Michael Freedland. 1997
A romance on three legs: Glenn Gould's obsessive quest for the perfect piano
By Katie Hafner. 2008
This account of the compulsive search for a highly responsive concert piano by Canadian Glenn Gould combines the parallel histories…
of one of the most controversial and brilliant pianists of the last century and the instrument on which he played. Presents a biography of Gould, who was known for his quirks, and a history of the German-bred Steinway piano company. It also features the interaction between Gould and Charles Verne Edquist, his nearly blind piano tuner. 2008.Buddy Holly: the real story
By Ellis Amburn. 1997
Holly was the personification of the American dream, and he died tragically at the age of twenty-two, but there was…
another side to him. Based on interviews with Holly's family, friends and lovers, this book reveals the truth behind the myth of the rock and roll star. 1995.