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Alexis Kandilis is an international conductor at the height of his profession. He receives standing ovations at every concert and wildly enthusiastic reviews from the media. Yet, on a personal level he is deeply unfulfilled. Mahler’s haunting "Song on the Death of Children" plays over and over in his mind, bringing back ugly childhood memories he can’t erase. A strange collection of not-quite-true friends and not really beloved family surrounds him: his mother, Clio, who forced him to abandon his dreams of composing for a more prestigious career as a conductor; his wife, Charlotte, whom he despises and frequently betrays; his bisexual friends Pavlina and Tatiana; Sacha, a young and talented Russian flutist; and Ted, his agent, who has booked—or overbooked—him for the next three seasons. They all provide some measure of reassurance, but it is easy to predict that Kandilis’s glorious world will soon shatter. The media takes advantage of an altercation between Kandilis and a percussionist during a rehearsal to attack him, condemning not only his action but also his unorthodox methods. After a panic attack before a concert, he makes an unforgivable mistake during a performance, and as a result, he is denied the direction of the most prestigious performance of the decade. In his private life, things are also falling apart. Sacha introduces him to an exclusive poker club made up of multimillionaires, but his new rich friends begin to distance themselves from him as he becomes increasingly difficult, until even his manager recommends that he take some time off. Used to being a winner, Kandilis starts gambling — and losing — heavily. His disintegration accelerates, and at last he enters a psychiatric hospital. He still has some friends he can count on, but even the most loyal among them can’t protect him against himself. On his descent into hell, he discovers but cannot avoid the darkness that is in all hearts, including his own.
In this ground-breaking synthesis of art and science, Diana Deutsch, one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of music, shows how illusions of music and speech--many of which she herself discovered--have fundamentally altered thinking about the brain. These astonishing illusions show that people can differ strikingly in how they hear musical patterns--differences that reflect variations in brain organization as well as influences of language on music perception. Drawing on a wide variety of fields, including psychology, music theory, linguistics, and neuroscience, Deutsch examines questions such as: When an orchestra performs a symphony, what is the "real" music? Is it in the mind of the composer, or the conductor, or different members of the audience? Deutsch also explores extremes of musical ability, and other surprising responses to music and speech. Why is perfect pitch so rare? Why do some people hallucinate music or speech? Why do we hear phantom words and phrases? Why are we subject to stuck tunes, or "earworms"? Why do we hear a spoken phrase as sung just because it is presented repeatedly? In evaluating these questions, she also shows how music and speech are intertwined, and argues that they stem from an early form of communication that had elements of both. Many of the illusions described in the book are so striking and paradoxical that you need to hear them to believe them. The book enables you to listen to the sounds that are described while reading about them.
A specialist in visual perception, Ninio (Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques, Paris) presents many classic and new illusions, explains the underlying logic of the various types, and suggests their value for neurological and physiological research. He does not provide an index. La Science des Illusions was published in 1998 by Editions Odile Jacob. Philip has translated widely from the French, including an autobiography of Francois Jacob. c. Book News Inc.
This book is based on an extensive filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Diana Deutsch, Professor of Psychology at UC San Diego and one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of music. This conversation provides behind the scenes insights into her discovery of a large number of auditory illusions, including the so-called Octave Illusion, which concretely illustrate how what we think we’re hearing is often quite different from the actual sounds that are hitting our eardrums. This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, Revealing Mistakes, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. Eclectic Beginnings - Music, art, philosophy, and philosophical psychology II. Tones, Pitches and Critical Values - Intriguing results in music and memory III. The Octave Illusion - How to confuse the brain with tones IV. Medical Applications - A highly suggestive result for epilepsy patients V. Eyes vs. Ears - The neurophysiological differences between vision and hearing VI. Gut Issues - The impact of discomfort VII. The Scale Illusion - Auditory scene analysis and evolutionary factors VIII. Surrounded by Illusions - From the Glissando Illusion to Tchaikovsky’s 6th IX. Perfect Pitch & Tone Languages - Why Mandarin might help your musicianship X. Towards Monotony? - The tonal implications of globalization XI. Embracing Discomfort - The benefits of being confused About Ideas Roadshow Conversations Series This book is part of an expanding series of 100+ Ideas Roadshow conversations, each one presenting a wealth of candid insights from a leading expert in a relaxed and informal setting to give non-specialists a uniquely accessible window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be encountered through standard lectures and textbooks. For other books in this series visit our website (https://ideas-on-film.com/ideasroadshow/).
Wiggling a pencil so that it looks like it is made of rubber, "stealing" your niece's nose, and listening for the sounds of the ocean in a conch shell– these are examples of folk illusions, youthful play forms that trade on perceptual oddities. In this groundbreaking study, K. Brandon Barker and Claiborne Rice argue that these easily overlooked instances of children's folklore offer an important avenue for studying perception and cognition in the contexts of social and embodied development. Folk illusions are traditionalized verbal and/or physical actions that are performed with the intention of creating a phantasm for one or more participants. Using a cross-disciplinary approach that combines the ethnographic methods of folklore with the empirical data of neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychology, Barker and Rice catalogue over eighty discrete folk illusions while exploring the complexities of embodied perception. Taken together as a genre of folklore, folk illusions show that people, starting from a young age, possess an awareness of the illusory tendencies of perceptual processes as well as an awareness that the distinctions between illusion and reality are always communally formed.
Dominica and her tribe of hungry ghosts were driven from Esperanza, that magical city high in the Andes, but they were not all destroyed. As a last devastating blow against Tess Livingston, she seized Tess's niece, Maddie, as a host, and fled away to the United States. Now, this evil bruja has settled in a small resort town in Florida and is cementing her power over a new tribe of the unquiet dead. But she will not be able to take over Cedar Key, not without arousing the suspicion of the U.S. government. And not without attracting the attention of Wayra, her oldest lover and most bitter enemy. On Cedar Key, Kate Davis is trying to raise her son on a bartender's pay. She grew up in this small community, and she knows everyone in town pretty well. So Kate notices when people begin behaving oddly, and it scares her to death. It makes her want to run. Farther away in Florida, Nick Sanchez is having visions of a young woman being held hostage by terrorists. Nick is a psychic, a “remote viewer,” working for a top-secret government unit, and any hint of terrorism, from any source, is enough to make Homeland Security take notice. When it's combined with reports of a dozen deaths from a mysterious disease that makes the victims bleed out completely, then it's time for action. Kate’s not going to be able to get off Cedar Key. Passion, terror, blood, and courage abound in this supernatural thriller that will take your breath away.
An international team of scholars presents historic, philosophic, philological and theoretical perspectives on Carter's extensive musical repertoire.
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'She is unique. She is legend' THE TIMES 'A tour de force' EVENING STANDARD 'A wonderfully mordant analyst of human weakness' Martin Amis Earth, like the rest of the Known Worlds, has fallen to the Shing. Scattered here and there, small groups of humans live in a state of semi-barbarism. They have lost the skills, science and knowledge that had been Earth's in the golden age of the League of Worlds, and whenever a colony of humans tries to rekindle the embers of a half-forgotten technology, the Shing, with their strange, mindlying power, crush them out. There is one man who can stand against the malign Shing, but he is an alien with amber eyes and must first prove to paranoid humanity that he himself is not a creature of the Shing.