New book: Picking Up the Flute, by John Elder

[bradhurley]

My friend John Elder, best known as a nature writer and professor of English at Middlebury College in Vermont for more than 3 decades, has written a book about his experience taking up Irish flute in his 60s. He and his wife Rita played classical music together for years, but when they retired they decided to learn traditional Irish music; she picked up the concertina and he picked up the flute. The book covers much more than just the process of learning a new instrument and an unfamiliar genre of music; there are musings here on marriage, literature, nature, poetry, geology, and the coast of Connemara.

Details at http://www.johnelderauthor.com

[jim stone]

Very cool, especially since I started playing flute at 60. Thanks for the heads up.

[uilleannified]

My friend John Elder, best known as a nature writer and professor of English at Middlebury College in Vermont for more than 3 decades, has written a book about his experience taking up Irish flute in his 60s. He and his wife Rita played classical music together for years, but when they retired they decided to learn traditional Irish music; she picked up the concertina and he picked up the flute. The book covers much more than just the process of learning a new instrument and an unfamiliar genre of music; there are musings here on marriage, literature, nature, poetry, geology, and the coast of Connemara.

Details at http://www.johnelderauthor.com

That is refreshing! He talks about retirement and other things too.

Hope he gets time to make a CD, it would be great to hear the standard he got to having begun so late in life.

[JS]

Thanks for this. Sounds right up my street.

[bradhurley]

Hope he gets time to make a CD, it would be great to hear the standard he got to having begun so late in life.

You can actually hear samples of him playing the tunes he talks about in the book:

http://www.johnelderauthor.com/themusic/

When I listened to these a few days ago many of the tunes were out of order (i.e., the titles and tunes were mismatched); John asked the web developer to fix it but it might take a little while.

He recorded these after playing the flute for 4-5 years; as he says in the book "I've come only so far--as one may hear." But he's got a great ear for the music and he has come a long way in a short time. It helps that his first flute teacher was Catherine McEvoy!

[JS]

Thanks for the recommendation, Brad. I very much enjoyed the book. Lots of good stuff in there about Vermont and Robert Frost as well.