Blackwater Press – förlag

Cloaked in mystery, Anton Seidl materialized in the New World as Wagner's personal emissary. A sorcerer, he commanded musical New York and toured widely, everywhere received with awed deference. In Brooklyn, Laura Langford's Seidl Society presented summertime Seidl concerts on Coney Island fourteen times weekly. Working women arrived in special railroad cars; Black orphans were regaled with roast chicken, ice cream, and the Tannhauser March. A clairvoyant theosophist, Langford identified Seidl as a "chela" and traced the ceremonies of Parsifal to the Himalayas. Seidl's appeal was uncanny; at the American premiere of Tristan und Isolde, women stood on their chairs and "screamed their delight." At his funeral, women clasped elbows to force their way into the mobbed Metropolitan Opera House, a spectacle of chaos. His Manhattan friends-including Antonin Dvorak, whose New World Symphony he premiered-were legion. And yet Seidl remained a man apart, afflicted with secret sorrows.

I Piped, That She Might Dance by Iain MacDonald, with a foreword by Hugh Cheape, is an historical novel based on the life of Angus MacKay (1813-1859), first Piper to the Sovereign, appointed by Queen Victoria. Mackay, who is one of the most significant figures in the history of Scottish music, died after a long battle with physical and mental illness, though he left behind collections of pipe music still played today. This account of his life traces his long journey, from humble origins on the isle of Raasay to the height of fame in Her Majesty's service and beyond. His story is one that has long deserved to be told, and Iain MacDonald has obliged in style.

When the child he is supposed to capture is unlike anything he has ever seen – or been trained to expect – Peter must decide whether to go back empty handed or to accept Jamie’s pleas and take a chance on the fascinating yet unfathomable ‘bird child’. A perilous journey awaits the unusual trio who must rush away from the outskirts of the feared town of Belua and elude its inhabitants across an ancient forest and up remote mountains, or risk being spotted and hunt by them. Will the journey help them discover more about the bird child? Will they be welcomed back into HomeVillage, where the true brothers expect a familiar captured child just like them? Will the bird child finish breaking the close bond that used to exist between Peter and Jamie? A literary and haunting novel which explores our captivation with charismatic leaders and our discomfort with difference. Borrowing the central characters from Hugo Simberg’s cryptic painting The Wounded Angel and mobilising them in an allegorical tale inspired by the Venezuelan crisis and diaspora, this story of adventure, brotherhood and desperation asks: why do we follow our leaders and what are we willing to do to belong?