The new issue of Chamber Music America magazine has as its endpiece an abridged version of one of the chapters of my book ‘Sleeping in Temples’. It’s the chapter called ‘The Iceberg’, in which I contrast the huge amount of time most musicians spend practising and playing for no listeners with the relatively small amount of time they actually spend in front of an audience. Obviously all musicians know this situation intimately, but I’ve found that even regular concert-goers and music-lovers are often surprised when their attention is drawn to all the playing which ‘wastes its sweetness on the desert air’.

In the magazine, the excerpt is called ‘Playing for Nobody’. Editor Ellen Goldensohn, who recently read my book, was struck by the thought of all that unheard playing, so she chose an excerpt from ‘The Iceberg’ as the final word in the Spring 2015 magazine.

The magazine is available here as a digital edition; you can read the endpiece on page 80. It continues on page 79 (no, I haven’t got that the wrong way round!)