Conversation book with Julian Anderson out now

After a gestation of more than six years, I'm delighted to announce that Julian Anderson: Dialogues on Listening, Composing and Culture, my book of conversations with the composer Julian Anderson, has just been published by Boydell & Brewer. The book is, of course, about Julian and his music, but the conversations range far beyond, exploring all sorts of enthusiasms and ideas. It's a substantial book that we hope will be of interest not only to composers, but to anyone interested in music and music-making. To whet the appetite, here is an extract from the foreword, kindly written by Gilliam Moore, OBE (Director of Music for London's Southbank Centre):

The gathering together into a book of such knowledge, such clarity of thought, such intellectual generosity is welcome and overdue. It’s clear that Julian Anderson could be a major writer on music and culture, like Schumann or Schoenberg or Cage or Rameau. The fact that we have, to date, so few of his words about music in print is because he has dedicated himself to the hard labour of being a prolific composer of beautifully wrought and luminous music, as well as being a prized teacher of the next generation of composers. We can be thankful to Christopher Dingle for being midwife to this book; a stimulating conversation partner who knows Anderson’s music and his musical world inside out, who is able to provoke, prod, lead, react and add further insights to Julian’s. Christopher and Julian clearly enjoy each other’s company; the conversation crackles and fizzes along. It took me several times as long as it should have to read the book – not because it ever drags, but because it’s almost impossible to not to pick up on Anderson’s enthusiasms and go off down rabbit-holes of listening to everything from Hildegard of Bingen to Ligeti, from Dufay to Messiaen, from Ruth Crawford Seeger to Haydn, from Shetland fiddle music to an Indian raga played by Hariprasad Chaurasia.

We enjoyed ourselves very much with these conversations and we hope that comes across, capturing the enthusiasm, passion and sense of fun prompted by discussing this thing we call music.