Klarinet Archive - Posting 000110.txt from 2004/06
From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] The beginning is now
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 09:26:05 -0400
My website is now begun, though it is very primitive at the
moment. It does contain a picture of my book jacket and a blurb
on the book itself, certainly enough for a clarinet player to go
all weak in the knees.
You can't order the book now. Only when it is ready (around July
31) will it be orderable in either paper back ($19.95) or hard
cover ($29.95). If I come through your town (see below about the
tour), I autograph it for a pizza.
The web site is www.leesonbooks.com
The "Preface" link will tell you what the book is all about.
Reviews will be mounted as soon as they arrive from the
approximately 10 people who have agreed to do a one-paragraph
review blurb for me. You can review the book too, and as long as
you don't suggest that the author ought to have his head and his
writing style explored surgically, I'll post it. Nice reviews,
constructively critical reviews, etc. are welcome. But if you
tell me that I don't know how to spell "Gran Partitta," be
prepared for a whirlwind waltz through the valley of the shadow
of death.
I am going to need every clarinet player I can lay my hands on
for word of mouth advertisement. You need to tell every clarinet
player you know that, "If you don't buy his book, Dan Leeson will
burn your house down, sell your family into involuntary
servitude, put forth rumors that your dark sound is so dark and
deep that it cannot be heard beyond the second row, state that
you play on a dented, old, Beuscher metal clarinet that has a
badly warped, white Woody Herman mouthpiece..." and other things
too horrible to mention.
Beginning in September, I'll be touring the southwest speaking at
every college/university I can get my hands on and for that I
will be asking some of you for the contact person at certain
schools. In the SF Bay area I hopeto give a one hour talk on the
book at the SF Conservatory, UC Santa Cruz, SJ State, Santa Clara
College, and UC San Francisco. I'll post the details of the talks
on this and other lists shortly. It's a serious technical talk
designed to create increased interest in the book, there are no
fees to have me, and if you want to know how badly the history of
both K. 581 and K. 622 are screwed up, you will want to be there.
My purpose is, of course, to sell books, but the tour will NOT
hawk the book. I'll mention it of course, but only as an element
in a talk about the 2006 Mozart commemorative year, the technical
issues of forging a Mozart manuscript, and the special
impediments that forging the manuscript of K. 622 has.
Oh yes. Did I tell you that the book is a fiction novel with a
murder and a mystery in it? Very little sex, though. My wife
told me that I have too little experience and absolutely no
expertise whatsoever to write about that subject.
Remember, on the SW tour (which is the first of four), I'll go
anywhere that I'm invited and there is no fee, though if the
school will put me up that would be nice but not mandatory. The
talk is free anyway. The only requirement is that I want and
need a BIG audience: Music history students, instrumentalists,
musicologists, music education students, etc. I'm not going to
lay out this kind of money on a book tour and then have nobody
show up for the talk. I'll handle the details of the tour with
the individuals setting it up. That will be, at the larger
schools, the professor of clarinet, though there is a lot to the
talk that is other than clarinet. Every now and then I'll ask
this list, "Who is the clarinet instructor at ...?"
And in early spring 2005, my second book entitled, "Opus Ultimum:
The Story of the Mozart Requiem" will follow on as my tribute to
the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. So even your college
choral forces might be interested in my tour because I'll speak
about this second book if asked. This book is NOT fiction, though
my churlish enemies will say "He made it all up."
So if you are in the Southwest (and that covers, from west to
east, everything from the Pacific Ocean to a vertical line that
goes through San Antonio and Dallas, and from south to north, the
Mexican border up to I-70 Colorado), get on someone's back and
say, "Invite Leeson. It will cost you nothing, and he will kill
me if we don't invite him here." You may also add such praise as
"He is, of course, the finest basset horn player on Granger
Avenue in Los Altos, California, and was formerly the alternate
second basset hornist with the Ellis Island Opera Company."
That's a substantial curriculum vita which, I am sure, makes you
all jealous.
OK everybody. Let's get to work.
Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net
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