Composer, conductor and operatic polymath Daron Hagen has written five symphonies, a dozen concertos, 13 operas, reams of chamber music and more than 350 art songs. His intimate, unsparing memoir chronicles his life, from his haunted childhood in Wisconsin to the upper echelons of the music world in New York and Europe. Hagen's vivid anecdotes about his many collaborators, friends and mentors--including Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, Gian Carlo Menotti, Paul Muldoon, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson and Gore Vidal--counterpoint a cautionary tale of the sacrifices necessary to succeed in the brutally unforgiving business of classical music.

With tension as taut as strings on a cello, the fourth Michael Ohayon mystery from “Israel’s Agatha Christie,” in which the police officer must solve the murder of two musicians, is “pure reading pleasure” (New York Times). After his cellist friend's father and brother—who are also well-known musicians—are brutally murdered, Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon, a classical music afficionado, sets out to solve the crime. From the opening pages, where the detective plays a compact disc of Brahm's First Symphony, to the newly discovered music for an unknown Vivaldi requiem that provides a rock-solid motive for the crime, lovers of crime novels, as well as music, will thrill to every dulcet note.