Mozart in
the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music
781.68092 T492t
Blair Tindall
In the
tradition of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and Gelsey
Kirkland’s Dancing on My Grave, Mozart in the Jungle delves into
the lives of the musicians and conductors who inhabit the insular world of
classical music. In a book that inspired the Amazon Original series starring
Gael García Bernal and Malcolm McDowell, oboist Blair Tindall recounts her
decades-long professional career as a classical musician—from the recitals and
Broadway orchestra performances to the secret life of musicians who survive
hand to mouth in the backbiting New York classical music scene, where musicians
trade sexual favors for plum jobs and assignments in orchestras across the
city.
Tindall and her fellow journeymen musicians often play drunk, high, or
hopelessly hungover, live in decrepit apartments, and perform in hazardous
conditions— working-class musicians who schlep across the city between
low-paying gigs, without health-care benefits or retirement plans, a stark
contrast to the rarefied experiences of overpaid classical musician superstars.
An incisive, no-holds-barred account, Mozart in the Jungle is the first
true, behind-the-scenes look at what goes on backstage and in the Broadway pit.
(from publisher)
