Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, And Classical Music

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• Blair Tindall, an oboist, proves that wild living and the drug culture aren't limited to pop music: as a classical musician, she has firsthand experience of everything from drug dealing to orgies. She has also become deeply disillusioned with the conservatory mills that graduate far too many musicians for the gigs available. In this mostly bitter memoir, she tells all, and in the process of bemoaning the facts of her life, she proves that she's adept at writing about them.
• "[A] hoity-toity version of VH1's BEHIND THE MUSIC that goes to great lengths to demonstrate that orchestra members participate in, as the subtitle reads, 'Sex, Drugs and Classical Music'.... While MOZART intersperses memoirish chapters with appraisals of the past and current state of classical music, the emphasis leans towards the sensational."
• "...Tindall's central complaint--that the classical-music world has created a crisis by training too many musicians and supporting a culture of exorbitant pay for a few fortunate stars--is difficult to refute."
• "[A] provocative blend of no-holds-barred memoir and tough-minded reporting about the state of classical music....A real eye-opener...."
• "[A] fresh, highly readable and caustic perspective on an overglamorized world."
• From her debut recital at Carnegie Hall to performing with the orchestras of Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, oboist Blair Tindall has been playing classical music professionally for twenty-five years. She's also lived the secret life of musicians who survive hand to mouth, trading sex and drugs for low-paying gigs and the promise of winning a rare symphony position or a lucrative solo recording contract. In Mozart in the Jungle, Tindall describes her graduation from the North Carolina School of the Arts to the backbiting New York classical music scene, a world where Tindall and her fellow classical musicians often play drunk, high, or hopelessly hung-over, live in decrepit apartments, and perform in hazardous conditions.
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  (In the cramped confines of a Broadway pit, the decibel level of one instrument is equal to the sound of a chain saw.)
  
  Mozart in the Jungle offers a stark contrast between the rarefied experiences of overpaid classical musician superstars and those of the working-class musicians. For lovers of classical music, Mozart in the Jungle is the first true, behind-the-scenes look at what goes on backstage and in the Broadway pit.
  
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