[Cover photo credit to Ed Rode]

Pursuing the “rewards of active listening”, journalist and author Craig Havighurst’s new memoir/manifesto, Musicality For Modern Humans: How To Listen Like An Artist is out now in hardback, paperback, and eBook, from independent press The Sager Group.

Since becoming known in the Arts & Leisure section of The Wall Street Journal in the late 1990s, Havighurst has covered American Roots music, including Bluegrass, Folk, and Americana. Meanwhile, he’s cultivated a lifelong interest in Jazz and composed music, with the resources of a reporter and access to musical settings and situations.

With Musicality, decades of conversations with musicians and producers have been distilled into a personal memoir, which is “a thoughtfully written rumination, and a practical guide to a lifelong engagement with music.”

Musicality is about “how composers and musicians manipulate tone, time, and timbre to reach us emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.” It’s also about “how we respond and how alert we are to creativity and nuance.” Havighurst simplifies music theory, supports the excellent artists working today, and “guides readers in a rethink of their musical diet.”