Chopin and Beyond

Byron Janis

Description

One of the world's greatest classical pianists reveals how the "other world" transformed his life and career

By any measure, Byron Janis has had an extraordinary musical career. His discovery of two long-lost Chopin scores made headlines around the world, and he has been honored many times for his breathtaking performances of some of the most exciting and challenging works in the standard classical piano repertoire. As he retraces this remarkable journey in Chopin and Beyond, he shares something even more extraordinary: the other-worldly experiences that have shaped his life and music in surprising and profound ways.

• Shares milestones and memories from the life and musical career of one of the world's greatest pianists
• Includes lively anecdotes of famous classical musicians and other notable figures, including Vladimir Horowitz and Pablo Picasso
• Describes his long-secret but ultimately triumphant battle with arthritis
• Recounts the paranormal experiences that deepened his personal association with Chopin, effected near miraculous recoveries from serious accidents, and more

Like the best music, Chopin and Beyond will open your mind to explore the wonder and possibility of a different world.
Foreword by Maria Cooper Janis.

1 CHOPIN WALTZES.

2 BEGINNINGS.

3 DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS.

4 WORKING WITH HOROWITZ.

5 SOUTH AMERICA.

6 CARNEGIE HALL.

7 WANDA.

8 A FEW MORE TURNS OF THE WHEEL.

9 COMING TO TERMS WITH THE PARANORMAL.

10 NOHANT.

11 SOVIET UNION, 1960–1962.

12 A RIVIERA DREAMSCAPE.

13 ADIEU À LA BELLE FRANCE.

14 MEETING MARIA.

15 SYNCHRONICITY.

16 AT LAST.

17 THE ABBEY OF REGINA LAUDIS.

18 A POWER TRIP.

19 ARTHRITIS.

20 MEETING URI GELLER.

21 PÈRE-LACHAISE AND MARIE D’AGOULT.

22 A PATH TO SPONTANEITY?

23 PARANORMAL HIGH JINKS.

24 SAND DRAWING.

25 CAPE COD MYSTERIES.

26 COMPLETING THE CIRCLE.

27 A PICASSO DREAM.

28 MEETING CHAGALL.

29 ANDREW BOREY.

30 ISRAEL.

31 REINCARNATION.

32 THE UMBRELLA.

33 UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS.

34 THE BELLS.

EPILOGUE.

Acknowledgments.

Recommended Reading.

Index.

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• parapsychology
• Lettres et linguistique
• Jung
• Biography
• Carl Jung
• Pablo Picasso
• Frédéric Chopin
• Byron Janis
• Autobiography
• Jung (homonymie)
• Music

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 23 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470872338
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Table of Contents
 
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Praise
Foreword
 
Chapter 1 - CHOPIN WALTZES
Chapter 2 - BEGINNINGS
Chapter 3 - DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS
Chapter 4 - WORKING WITH HOROWITZ
Chapter 5 - SOUTH AMERICA
Chapter 6 - CARNEGIE HALL
Chapter 7 - WANDA
Chapter 8 - A FEW MORE TURNS OF THE WHEEL
Chapter 9 - COMING TO TERMS WITH THE PARANORMAL
Chapter 10 - NOHANT
Chapter 11 - SOVIET UNION, 1960-1962
Chapter 12 - A RIVIERA DREAMSCAPE
Chapter 13 - ADIEU À LA BELLE FRANCE
Chapter 14 - MEETING MARIA
Chapter 15 - SYNCHRONICITY
Chapter 16 - AT LAST
Chapter 17 - THE ABBEY OF REGINA LAUDIS
Chapter 18 - A POWER TRIP
Chapter 19 - ARTHRITIS
Chapter 20 - MEETING URI GELLER
Chapter 21 - PÈRE-LACHAISE AND MARIE D’AGOULT
Chapter 22 - A PATH TO SPONTANEITY?
Chapter 23 - PARANORMAL HIGH JINKS
Chapter 24 - SAND DRAWING
Chapter 25 - CAPE COD MYSTERIES
Chapter 26 - COMPLETING THE CIRCLE
Chapter 27 - A PICASSO DREAM
Chapter 28 - MEETING CHAGALL
Chapter 29 - ANDREW BOREY
Chapter 30 - ISRAEL
Chapter 31 - REINCARNATION
Chapter 32 - THE UMBRELLA
Chapter 33 - UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS
Chapter 34 - THE BELLS
 
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
Recommended Reading
Index

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Copyright © 2010 by Byron Janis and Maria Cooper Janis. All rights reserved
 
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
 
Photo credits: Pages ii, 225, photos by David Douglas Duncan; page 12, photo by Pierre Boulet/Life; pages 109, 110 (chap. 11), photos by Peter Gravina. All other photos are from the author’s collection.
 
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
 
Janis, Byron.
Chopin and beyond : my extraordinary life in music and the paranormal / Byron Janis with Maria Cooper Janis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-60444-1 (cloth : alk. paper); ISBN 978-0-470-77058-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-0-470-87232-1 (ebk); 978-0-470-87233-8 (ebk)
1. Janis, Byron. 2. Pianists—Biography. 3. Parapsychology—Biography.
I. Janis, Maria Cooper. II. Title. ML417.J34A3 2010 786.2092—dc22 [B]
2010010788
 
To Maria
Who showed me the love I knew existed but never thought I’d find.
Read not to contradict and confuse, nor to believe and to take for granted, but to weigh and consider.
—SIR FRANCIS BACON
Foreword
by Maria Cooper Janis
For forty-three years I’ve lived with, traveled with, laughed and cried with, and, most of all, loved an amazing man. It has been and continues to be an incredible, fantastic adventure: every day completely unpredictable, never knowing what the next five minutes will bring.
I have often been asked what it is like to have both a famous father and a famous husband. In a way, one prepared me for the other. It’s kind of like being in the middle of a hero sandwich because both these men are giants in their own field.
This is not a book about Gary Cooper, my father, although every day I carry much of him with me, along with the lessons I learned from him about living with an artist. He has helped me to understand and feel the world of creativity—its demands and the price it asks of those who travel on that road and of those who travel with them. Byron’s own voyage has taken him to both familiar and strange shores. “Do you dare to travel with me?” he seemed to ask of me, as I listened and gave him my ears and my heart for a journey of the soul.
Touring with a concert pianist is an unusual way of life that is never boring. It gives the gifts of beauty, new places, and new cultures. And always there is the common language of music bringing strangers together. Orchestra rehearsals have a drama all their own for me, as I am a painter. I had a rehearsal hall full of captive subjects to draw and music to take me away to wonderful worlds.
Byron’s whole life has been music from the age of three. He was fascinated by sounds as his young fingers explored the piano keys. By four, he had discovered those sounds could become music, and he was off and running. He will tell you about those highly unusual childhood years in the chapters to come. Fame and glamour arrived while he was still young; Byron navigated the transition from child prodigy to great artist with a humility and grace that is rare.
Later he discovered another gift within himself besides music. It would expand his horizons and in a very real way open his perception of reality to encompass issues beyond. How extensive is my repertoire? How big is my career? How much is my fee? He certainly knew how important all those things were, but Byron was, in a way, a kind of amphibian, someone who could live in two worlds at once—our sensory reality as well as the world beyond our five senses. He lives at the interface of mind/matter interactions, where telepathy, psychokinesis, and healing can occur. Extraordinary things happen around Byron, some of which he generates himself.
Byron and me walking in the park at Thoiry in the mid-1970s.

In 1964, Byron, one of the most romantic young idols of the classical music world, entered my life, and on my mother’s honeymoon no less.To quote an old family friend, Ernest Hemingway,“the earth moved.” My soul was moved and my life changed totally. We met again three nights later at Byron’s rented villa above Villefranche on the French Riviera. What does a young woman do when a shy artist with incredible deep energy burning in his brown eyes looks at her and then goes to his piano on a terrace overlooking the moonlit harbor? That evening, Byron played for his guests, but I felt he was playing only for me. He gave us an encore, a beautiful haunting and romantic song called “Moscow Nights.”
Now, I am from Hollywood—Beverly Hills, to be exact—and the first things I learned were the fiction, the folly, and the transience of a reaction like the one I was having. But there it was, and the immenseness of it erased any skepticism that this kind of thing could be real and point toward a future. It was so strong that I did not care if I got hurt. There was an inevitability about this. If the consequences were to be powerful and shattering, that too seemed to be a necessary part of my life from that moment on. In much less time than it takes for me to tell you this, I knew something , and it was wonderful. But at the time, Byron was a married man, and I would never walk through that door and break up a family. As I muttered “Oh, damn” under my breath, I rode with the moment and blanked out any hope for a future with Byron. At least I had experienced one real, true, beautiful moment in which all was known, all was said, all was given—and we had only shaken hands.
But who is Byron Janis? With time I would learn about this man who is an artist, a perfectionist, a man impatient with mediocrity, a warrior, and a risk taker—all of these the notes in the music that is his life.
Byron has a modesty and a shyness about himself that almost seals his lips against revealing the physical and mental cost of his musical and extrasensory gifts. And the cost has been extraordinary: the need to maintain a peak level of physical fitness; to overcome an injury to his left pinky finger, numb since he was eleven; to endure bungled bursitis surgery on his right shoulder and creeping insidious arthritis in both hands, both wrists, and all ten fingers. He has been in an adrenaline-fueled overdrive for extended periods of time. Think of the charge to the finish line in the New York Marathon, the final furlongs at the Kentucky Derby, the last lap of the Indy 500—this was Byron’s daily pace. It had to be. And although he had the counsel of great rheumatologists and powerful topical treatments to help with the pain, he never abused alcohol or drugs. He took only prescribed medicines in spite of their bad side effects. Mind over the supposed limitations of matter carried him forward