Book details

  • Genre:biography & autobiography
  • Sub-genre:Entertainment & Performing Arts
  • Language:English
  • Pages:340
  • eBook ISBN:9781667891057
  • Paperback ISBN:9781667891040

The Roaring Brook Fiddler

Creative Life on the Wings of an Empath

By Julie Lyonn Lieberman

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Overview

Julie was born into a family of creative artists. Deeply inspired by her parents' passion for human rights, peace and justice for all, Julie believed she could save the world through music. Midway into her journey, all she'd loved, all she'd worked for, was ripped away. This is the magnificently woven story of how her muse and her sixth sense saved her soul.

The Roaring Brook Fiddler tells the story of what it takes to live life as a creative soul. Julie has spent most of her life swimming upstream with only the tenacious family code, her sixth sense, and her passion to create a better future for herself and for the world as her tools. Ultimately, the very fiber of her being was put to the test to do more than just survive: to create inspirational, uplifting art.

To successfully build a life as a musician, one must learn to live between the cracks and shrug off countless roadblocks and naysayers. Often ahead of the curve, Julie Lyonn Lieberman has built a unique life surmounted these endless challenges to build her life’s work. But the very DNA of her life path was tested to the utmost when a steam pipe burst in her music studio. It was as if the steam permeated her life path and invited far larger professional and personal challenges.

The Roaring Brook Fiddler: Creative Life on the Wings of an Empath is a work of non-fiction in the music, creativity, and self-reflection subgenres. Within this highly creative work, the author describes her journey to break free from tradition to express her authentic, creative self in new, innovative, and improvisational ways. What results is a bold and heartfelt book about the transformational power of creative freedom.

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Description

What does it take to live a creative life of conscience? To transition from a loving cocoon out into a harsh world that seeks the rational above fantasy, snubs creativity, and seeks money above all else? Julie was gifted a loving, close-knit artistic family of activists. Her education was supported, and her spirit, nurtured. But Julie's life path roared into the dark depths, forcing her to strip away all illusions about marriage, success, comfort and security. Only one pawn in a failing planet, determined to make a difference, she fought to keep her muse alive as she rode hurdle after hurdle into a new life.

ENDORSEMENT QUOTES

Julie Lyonn Lieberman has written a truly beautiful book that touches the heart, mind, and spirit without ever getting sentimental, even while penetrating some of the most private and profound moments of her life.  This is more than a memoir; it is scenes from one of the most important violinists in the genres of folk and jazz there is. Julie is a consummate artist, with an unflinching eye for the candor, able to evoke the deepest emotional truth with her breathtaking honesty and integrity. She is also one hell of a writer.    

—Robert Fritz, author, The Path of Least Resistance

What do the words empathic, visionary, and creative have in common? Author Julie Lyonn Lieberman. The Roaring Brook Fiddler is a unique, compelling, and deeply touching story of the development of a truly creative spirit. For anyone living the creative life, or exploring sensitivities beyond the norm, this book is for you!

— Sean Murphy, Hemingway Award-winning author of One Bird, One Stone and The Time of New Weather

 

Julie Lieberman is a natural writer. Her book recounts her adventures as a formal classical musician who forged new paths as a pioneering improviser and role model for a new generation to dare to be creative, What she says rings true, speaks from the heart and invites the reader into her world to hear you tell her story.

— David Amram, Composer/Conductor/Multi-Instrumentalist

Julie Lyonn Lieberman’s book is riveting… an amazing tale. Man oh man can she tell a story and keep the reader’s attention glued to the page! I closed the cover with tears streaming down my face.

— Pamela Spiro Wagner, author of We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders (CavanKerry Press, 2009) and Divided Minds (St. Martin’s Press, 2005)

This is a wonderful, courageous, sad and beautiful book, one that will leave the reader richer. It will be like a silver sword for them—something that makes them feel that if the author could have survived all this and decided to thrive, so can they.

— Anne Weiss, poet and songwriter

 

I love the memoir!  It is inspirational. There are so many wonderful memory stories I’ve come across over the last few years. The Roaring Brook Fiddler rises to the top of my list!
—Sydney Alberg

 

What really stopped me cold in my tracks was your walk with your dog Midnight just before the Sandy Hook shooting. You described the scene so well about when you encountered the Sandy Hook shooter. Your empathic nature as well as as your dog, Midnights', were blessings and might have saved your lives! I view your efforts for the town as the most public humanitarian gift any musician could have given to help console and contribute to the healing process for those affected by such devastating losses in the massacre.
— VICKI RICHARDS

US violinist and educator Julie Lyonn Lieberman is a force of nature, exemplified by this latest publication. Not a book of music, this time, but a memoir of her creative life with its twists and turns, highs and lows, and candid self-awareness. She writes with her heart on her sleeve, and the resulting publication is a fulfillment of a promise to her mother as she lay dying.

The book recounts a series of experiences, family relationships and challenges. It doesn’t flinch. And it is also a compelling reflection of a musician’s other life that the audience doesn’t know about – how, despite internal challenges, the show needs to go on not only to put food on the table, but also to allow a career and artistic life to progress.
—ANNE INGLIS, STRAD Magazine

Julie Lyonn Lieberman is an inspiring and innovative music educator and her books and videos have challenged and supported me since the beginning of my career as a performer and teacher. I ordered The Roaring Brook Fiddler as soon as I heard about it because I was curious to read about her life in music.

I found it to be an emotionally charged read, infused with the author’s creative energy, and positive mindset and perseverance through many difficult challenges. I’m sure that many readers will find her story resonates with them. 

—LEAH ROSEMAN, Violinist and host of “Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman”

This was an incredibly emotional and deeply inspiring read, Julie. Thank you so much for sharing your life experience.
— JOANNE TOONE

Wow!  What a fascinating story.  As suspenseful as any novel.  
—CHRISTINE ROBBINS

I must tell you how wonderful this book is. It takes me deeply inside your soul. You have immense talent and heart.
—KEN MESEROLL

I finished your book.  Loved it.  I am amazed at how much of your history you remember well enough to put it into writing.  Your talent at relating thoughts and affairs of the heart is very much appreciated.  I can relate to so much of your story, even though our paths are different. Grief is grief, joy is joy, isn't it, and I loved experiencing all of yours.  Thank you for sharing such a meaningful life. 
—COE BARAKOS

Julie allows you to connect with her in this profoundly personal life story. I laughed and cried reading this book. It’s suspenseful, moving, and deeply emotional. 

—MADELINE HERDEMAN, cellist, singer, educator, bandleader, songwriter.

 

 

About the Audiobook Version:

Julie Lyonn Lieberman has woven a lifetime of recorded original music into the narration of her life story. She coined the phrase “literary album” at the beginning of her 16 years of hard work on The Roaring Brook Fiddler with this vision in mind.

 

The Roaring Brook Fiddler is a work of non-fiction in the music, creativity, and self-reflection subgenres. It was written by Julie Lyonn Lieberman for the general reading audience and narrated by the author for this audiobook version. Within this highly creative work, the author expands on her training and career as a classical musician, as well as the experiences which encouraged her to break free from tradition and express her authentic, creative self in new, innovative, and improvisational ways. What results is a bold and heartfelt book about the transformational power of creative freedom.

Regarding the construction of this literary album, author Julie Lyonn Lieberman has a true gift for emotional narrative, tying together the many pertinent concepts as seamlessly as a composer complements one instrument with another to form a symphony. As a creative person myself, I found her journey to authenticity and freedom to be deeply resonant, and it was also expertly articulated to perfectly balance wider themes and structures against the emotional and personal content.

In terms of its audiobook presentation, you would expect someone like Lieberman to produce the highest quality sound, which is certainly the case here. The content is crisp, clear, and resonant, and Lieberman narrates with warmth and enthusiasm. It gives you the feeling that you truly know her like a dear friend by the end of the book. Overall, I’d highly recommend The Roaring Brook Fiddler for creative kindred souls everywhere.

—K.C. FINN, READER’S FAVORITE

 

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About The Author

Julie Lyonn Lieberman is the author of 13 books (see list below), 5 DVDs, 2 National Public Radio series, close to 50 string orchestra scores (published by Kendor, Carl Fischer, Alfred Music and Julie Lyonn Music), and over 50 magazine articles for publications such as STRINGS Magazine, STRAD Magazine, ASTA Journal, Fiddler Magazine, and Band and Orchestra, to name a few. She is a multi-style improvising violinist, vocalist, educator, radio producer, composer, recording artist, and performer as well as the Artistic Director for the summer program, Strings Without Boundaries, founded in 2003.

Ms. Lieberman has performed on and off Broadway as well as in folk and jazz clubs throughout the United States, Canada, Wales, Scotland, Portugal, Guatamala, and France. She’s taught as an adjunct at The Juilliard School and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music among other institutions, and has presented master classes for American String Teachers Association (ASTA), European String Teachers Association (ESTA), National Association for Music Education (NAfME), the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE), the Suzuki Institute, National String Workshop, National Orchestra Festival, International String Workshop, National Young Audiences, and the Carnegie Hall LinkUp Program. Julie is a longtime D’Addario Clinician, an NS Design and Volta performance artist, and an Eastman Strings Ambassador.

Her most recent project, Planet Strings Informance, offers three multi-style concert programs for bowed strings: “Fiddling in America,” “Contemporary Strings,” and “Stringin’ the World.” She is the Artistic Director for Strings Without Boundaries, a D’Addario Orchestral Premiere Clinician, an NS Design Performance Artist, and an Eastman Strings Ambassador.

Titles Include: “You Are Your Instrument,” “Improvising Violin,” “Rockin’ Out with Blues Fiddle,” “Planet Musician,” “Creative Band and Orchestra,” “A Festival of Violin & Fiddle Styles,” “ The Contemporary Violinist,” and “How to Play Contemporary Strings.”

 She…

  • Wrote, edited and appeared as the moderator in the documentary, Improvising Violin: Four Personal Views, which won Honorary Mention in the American Film and Video Festival
  • Worked for WBAI in NYC on a weekly show for four years interviewing American composers, titled “Hear and Now,”
  • Acted as a consultant to Ken Burns’ documentary, JAZZ.
  • Co-wrote the curriculum book for American String Teachers Association

Ms. Lieberman composed the music for the Off-Broadway play "The Yellow House" by Leonardo Shapiro, which won critical acclaim in the late eighties, premiering at La Mama in New York City for 30 days, followed a thirty-night run at the Theatre of Nations Festival. She played violin, keyboards, and sang for the production.

She is the recipient of over two dozen ASCAP awards and eight Meet the Composer awards and has performed her original music off Broadway, throughout the U.S., Canada, and in Europe, as well as on television and radio. She also has five recordings of original music to her credit.

Ms. Lieberman acted as composer-in-residence for four seasons at the City Center Manhattan Theatre Club Writers in Performance series. Her music for Alec Baldwin’s/Steve Lawrence’s production of "The Devil and Daniel Webster" aired on WNYC after premiering at City Center. Other productions include, "The Don," based on Edith Grossman’s new translation and in celebration of Don Quixote’s 400th birthday starring Mario Cantone, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Daphne Rubin-Vega; "Hemingway," starring Peter Gallagher, and "Edgar," based on the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe, as well as two other shows.

She was also the composer-in-residence for the first feminist theatre company in the world, “Emmatroupe,” for a handful of years in the 1980s. The productions were contributed to by writers Gloria Steinem, Kate Millet, and Andrea Dworkin and directed by Eleanor Johnson. The off-off-Broadway productions included “A Girl Starts Out” and “Against Silence.”

She has composed for and performed with such theater companies as Shaliko Company, The Magic Circle Opera Company, Imaginations Unlimited, and the Women’s Ensemble Theatre. Compositions for dance companies include Sundance, The American Spanish Dance Company, and choreographers Merian Soto, Judy Dworin, and Holly Fairbank.

Lieberman’s world jazz string quartet, "Ben’s Millennium Romp," was commissioned by Manchester Music Festival and premiered to a standing ovation. The piece opened their season in 2000 and was followed by compositions by Tania Leone and David Amram. She also composed and recorded the soundtrack for the Taoist exercise video "Body Logos" in 2002, and designed and recorded violin lines for Laura Nyro’s final album, Mother’s Spiritual. Her opus to the planet, The Green Anthem, was included in the Music Educators National Conference’s 2010 World’s Largest Concert.

Ms. Lieberman’s recordings of original music include "Empathic Connections," 1981, "Arcturus," 1984, "The Roaring Brook Fiddler," 1991, and "Mixing America," 1994. She was also a guest artist on Laura Nyro’s album, "Mother’s Spiritual," 1984, designing her own violin lines for the album.

Her recording of her string orchestra score, Bollywood Strings, has been performed world-wide, used by a football team(!), and used by the record company, Bella Union, located in England.

 

 

 

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