Acoustic Shadows: Essays from a Standing Pianist

Franz Liszt said that some music comes to you, and to other music you must go to it. This is certainly true of literature, and it is certainly true of the writing of Jack Kohl, who can be recondite but never thorny. His is a beguiling style. Kohl’s essays and novels always end in stylish prose. But once you come to him wholeheartedly you will stay with him. All subjects written by Mr. Kohl are chromatic and bejeweled and can be appreciated by those who still have the energy to go to him. So I have established here that the author of these essays in Acoustic Shadows brings to his writing a deep tactile understanding through his sensitive hearing—that in music, the piano, even in the hidden gardens of the literature, Jack Kohl’s sensibility is stirred by the immortal black and white keyboard, the most magnificent monochrome ever created, and through the transcendence of music that is no longer esoteric but still difficult to encounter in length and spirit. The reader will find remarkable things in these essays without having to play piano himself.