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The Musician's Spirit
- GenresMusic
228 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 10, 2025
If I could give this 3.5 stars, I would. There is a wealth of really thought-provoking and inspiring information in this book for any musician or artist, though it is much more geared towards the teacher and/or conductor over the performer, especially compared to The Musician's Soul, the first and previous book in this trilogy. As with his other books, there's several really interesting quotes to mull over peppered throughout.
As intrigued as I am by the idea of using personal storytelling to both convey one's inner soul to others and to better inform and enrich music making, that idea is not really discussed much in the book despite supposedly being its core premise. It's introduced at the beginning and not really discussed in any meaningful way until the very end of the book.
There are some really useful exercises and several pages of journal prompts in the back as well, but in this format they are hard to navigate. James Jordan recommends the reader purchase and use a journal to answer them, when really this would've worked so much better as a workbook rather than a textbook, with matte, untreated pages for easier writing and annotations. I did appreciate that the margins were larger than in The Musician's Soul, and there are several blank pages meant for journaling, but the treatment of the paper made writing and highlighting difficult, and the blank pages are nowhere near the journal questions.
My biggest issue is that the bulk of the book is filled with seemingly random, unconnected stories from both guest contributors and the author. I get that example stories should be a part of a book about storytelling, but there seemed to be no sense of rhyme or reason to what stories are being told, the order, or the subject. Many of them are only tangentially tied back to the premise, so it all feels very disjointed and jumbled and kind of like unnecessary filler.
Also, there were several instances of the same quotes appearing multiple times throughout the book, reused quotes from The Musician's Soul, and repetitive journal questions, which also seems like unnecessary filler. I also noticed quite a few typos and grammatical errors throughout, indicating that perhaps this book was rushed to publication. And the art was a little strange, made more difficult to appreciate by how small it appeared, which didn't really allow for much reflection, especially the photographs.
I'm still glad I read it, but it would've been so easy to greatly improve this book by cutting out all of the filler, a more thorough editing process, expanding on the core premise, and turning it into a workbook format.
As intrigued as I am by the idea of using personal storytelling to both convey one's inner soul to others and to better inform and enrich music making, that idea is not really discussed much in the book despite supposedly being its core premise. It's introduced at the beginning and not really discussed in any meaningful way until the very end of the book.
There are some really useful exercises and several pages of journal prompts in the back as well, but in this format they are hard to navigate. James Jordan recommends the reader purchase and use a journal to answer them, when really this would've worked so much better as a workbook rather than a textbook, with matte, untreated pages for easier writing and annotations. I did appreciate that the margins were larger than in The Musician's Soul, and there are several blank pages meant for journaling, but the treatment of the paper made writing and highlighting difficult, and the blank pages are nowhere near the journal questions.
My biggest issue is that the bulk of the book is filled with seemingly random, unconnected stories from both guest contributors and the author. I get that example stories should be a part of a book about storytelling, but there seemed to be no sense of rhyme or reason to what stories are being told, the order, or the subject. Many of them are only tangentially tied back to the premise, so it all feels very disjointed and jumbled and kind of like unnecessary filler.
Also, there were several instances of the same quotes appearing multiple times throughout the book, reused quotes from The Musician's Soul, and repetitive journal questions, which also seems like unnecessary filler. I also noticed quite a few typos and grammatical errors throughout, indicating that perhaps this book was rushed to publication. And the art was a little strange, made more difficult to appreciate by how small it appeared, which didn't really allow for much reflection, especially the photographs.
I'm still glad I read it, but it would've been so easy to greatly improve this book by cutting out all of the filler, a more thorough editing process, expanding on the core premise, and turning it into a workbook format.
January 12, 2017
I loved this book. It seemed a little all over the place, but maybe that was due to the way I read it (sporadically). I appreciated its message about the role of stories in music and it has inspired me to make adjustments to my life and relationship with music making.
January 8, 2011
A good middle book. Quick read. Lovely, colorful stories.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews