Gail Dixon – författare

Harry Freedman has been an important and respected figure in Canadian music for over half a century, and his productivity as a composer has been both prodigious and eclectic. Born in Poland in 1922 and raised in Winnipeg, Freedman studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music and played English Horn with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He resigned in 1970 to become the orchestra's first composer-in-residence, and has created some 175 works in a wide variety of genres including symphonies, concertos, string quartets, operas, ballets, film scores, popular songs, and jazz pieces.In The Music of Harry Freedman, Gail Dixon investigates Freedman's music with a view to illuminating its underlying principles, stylistic development, and means of coherence. Representative works from Freedman's oeuvre have been selected for detailed analysis. The chronological presentation of these works facilitates a clear understanding of Freedman's compositional style in its dramatic evolution from the tentative serial explorations of his early works to the eclectic stylistic spectrum of his later years. The analytic discussion is supplemented by a large number of musical examples, as well as compositional sketches and working notes, some in the composer's own hand. Numerous interviews with Freedman yield additional insights into his approach and perspective. Dixon does a great service to Canadian culture with this analytic study of the music of a celebrated twentieth-century figure.

The Periodic Table is one of the most recognizable images in science - and in our culture. Its 118 elements make up everything on our planet and in the entire universe. But how many of us actually know how to interpret its distinctive design? And what does its unique arrangement tell us about the behaviour of each element in the world around us? The Periodic Table looks at the fascinating story and surprising history of each of these elements, from the little-known uses of gold in medicine to that of arsenic as a wallpaper dye in the ninteenth-century and the development of the hydrogen bomb. Packed with interesting facts and figures and helpful illustrations, this accessible guide will help the armchair chemist navigate through the different groups of elements - and discover the world afresh.

50 Science Ideas You Really Need to Know is your guide to the biggest questions and deepest concepts from across the whole of science. What was the Big Bang? How did life on Earth arise? What does quantum mechanics tell us about the universe? Is true artificial intelligence possible? And does life exist on other planets? Moving from the basics of atoms and molecules, Newton's laws of physics and the building blocks of life to the cutting edge of nanotechnology, Einstein's theories of relativity and cloning, this book makes the many worlds of science accessible and illuminating. Featuring fifty concise, insightful and illustrated essays covering physics and astronomy, Earth and life sciences, chemistry and materials, psychology and computing, and exploring the ways they connect with each other and impact on our lives, 50 Science Ideas You Really Need to Know is the ideal introduction to the questions which fascinate us all.