Hanging Off the Edge: Revelations of a Modern Troubadour.(Book review)

Hanging Off the Edge: Revelations of a Modern Troubadour. By Priscilla McLean. New York: iUniverse, Inc., 2006. [xiii, 279 p. ISBN 0-595-37548-0 $21.95.] Works list, discography, bibliography, endnotes, compact disc.

This book could be called a contemporary woman composer's version of Dr. Burney's diaries and travel accounts. It contains fascinating details about people and places throughout the world and also about the obstacles which twentieth-century performing artists encountered. The reader experiences many things with the McLeans: the equipment schlepping; battles with facial shingles; lack of insurance; cross-country travel; prices of food, cars, tuition; interactive performance pieces; composition competitions; MacDowell Colony resident fellowships; an Indonesian videographer; hiking in wildlife parks, rainforests, and mountains; even writing a review for Notes.

Priscilla McLean, an electronic music composer/performer and video artist, narrates her autobiography with scattered original poems, philosophical thoughts, and selected diary entries. On 19 September 1974 she and her husband Bart gave their first electronic performance as the McLean Mix at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana. After several years working at academic institutions, the couple decided to make their living solely as performers. They have received numerous awards, grants, commissions, fellowships, and residencies.

The book is organized into four chapters: "Beginnings and Endings" (family heritages of Priscilla Taylor and her husband Bart McLean, adolescent years); "Becoming" (college years, teaching, performing); "The Composing Life" (descriptions and genesis of the fourteen musical excerpts on the accompanying compact disc); and "Dangling Thoughts" (recollections of ten people who made significant impressions on her, reflections on her "troubadour" life).

"Beginnings and Endings" inserts recollections from the 1993 cross-country concert tour (when her father died) with McLean's adolescent years. "Becoming" relates college years in Indiana, teaching gigs (including one at the University of Texas at Austin), and diary entries from a 1981 trip to Europe--touring Brussels, attending the Gaudeamus Festival in Holland, visiting IRCAM, serving as Musical America correspondent to the eleventh Muzicki Biennale in Zagreb, and participating in a radio interview in Hilversum.

"The Composing Life" includes some entertaining stories, e.g., McLean did not seek copyright permission for her work Variations & Mosaics on a Theme of Stravinsky, until Alexander Broude published the work. This piece was recorded by Jorge Mester and the Louisville Orchestra and nominated for ...