My Nine Lives: A Memoir of Many Careers in Music/Leon Fleisher

Description My Nine Lives is a powerful and stirring memoir of one of the greatest pianists of the postwar era--an inspiring tale of courage, compassion, and triumph over outstanding odds. At the peak of his career, celebrated pianist Leon Fleisher suddenly lost the use of two fingers on his right hand. Miraculously, at the age of sixty-six, he was diagnosed with focal dystonia, and learned to manage it through a combination of physical therapy and experimental Botox injections. In 2003 Fleisher returned to Carnegie Hall to give his first two-handed performance in over three decades and brought down the house. With his coauthor, celebrated music critic Anne Midgette, Fleisher reveals here for the first time the depression that threatened to engulf him as his condition worsened, and the sheer love of music that rescued him from complete self-destruction. About the Author Born in San Francisco, LEON FLEISHER made his Carnegie Hall debut at sixteen. He was Musical America 's Instrumentalist of the Year in 1994; the sub-ject of the 2006 Oscar-nominated short documentary Two Hands: The Leon Fleisher Story ; and a 2007 Kennedy Center Honoree. He continues to tour the world on an ambitious performance schedule. ANNE MIDGETTE is the chief classical musical critic of the Washington Post . A Yale graduate, she was previously a regular reviewer of classical music and theater for the New York Times.