Practicing: A Musician’s Return to Music

by: Glenn Kurtz

Published by: A Borzoi Book, published by Alfred A. Knopf

Reviewed by Beth Cummings

“Because when you play this instrument, it plays you too, and the dreams this relationship brings out may get to the bottom of who you are. …Let me wrap my arms around the guitar and with the gentlest touch brush my fingers against its delicate strings. I feel its body vibrate with a full singing tone. I hear this music; I feel it in my own body.” p. 105

I’ve quoted this passage from Glenn Kurtz in order to capture some of the immense feeling and extraordinary sensitivity about music, self and life that he expresses in this memoir. Kurtz began playing the guitar at the age of seven when his mother took some lessons at a folk music studio called the Guitar Workshop. At eight he became their youngest student and by ten he could play along with popular groups on the radio: Grateful Dead, Beatles and others. At twelve he began his love affair with classical guitar. He took lessons and practiced until the guitar became the main focus of his life through high school and at the Boston Conservatory of Music where he majored in classical guitar performance. He wanted to be the next Andre Segovia. By the time he reaches age twenty-five, he found himself to be a failure who would never make it as a musician no matter how much he practiced, and therefore he quit the guitar. He didn’t play again for ten years.

Kurtz left music and studied comparative literature. He became a college professor and a writer. His academic background as well as his musical history are well evidenced in the book. It is not an easy book to breeze through, but a book to savor. Kurtz’s style affected me in the same way that listening to good music can–bringing on a kind of reverie.

This book isn’t for everyone. I think that some basic knowledge of music and composers is probably essential background for the book. But for those readers who are interested in music and especially the classical guitar, this book is a genuine treat.

Armchair Interviews says: Wonderful memoir with music as its focus.