"Today, most of the music we hear is compressed to a fraction of its original sound, while analog masterpieces are turning to dust in record company vaults. As these recordings disappear, music fans aren't just losing a collection of notes. We're losing spaciousness, breadth of the sound field, and the ability hear and feel a ping of a triangle or a pluck of a guitar string, each with its own resonance and harmonics that slowly trail off into silence....

After years of rapprochement, the relationship between Russia and the West is more strained now than it has been in the past 25 years. Putin's motives, his reasons for seeking confrontation with the West, remain for many a mystery. Not for Mikhail Gorbachev. In this new work, Russia's elder statesman draws on his wealth of knowledge and experience to reveal the development of Putin's regime and the intentions behind it. He argues that Putin has significantly...

Synopsis: Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights. Was the Boston Tea Party the first WTO-style protest against transnational corporations? Did Supreme Court sell out America's citizens in the nineteenth century, with consequences lasting to this day? Is there a way for American citizens to recover democracy of, by, and for the people? Thom Hartmann takes on these most difficult questions and tells a startling...

Each selection is an excerpt from the song that would be particularly useful for an audition, with a piano introduction of 2 measures or less. Some excerpts are from the middle or end of the song.

"During the years between 1939 and 1953 the United States armed forces moved from a policy of restricting and segregating the Negro soldier, based largely on racial stereotypes that emerged from World War I, to a policy of equal opportunity and integration. Most writers point to 1954 or later as the origin of the Negro Revolution; however, this history of what was in the past an important issue for black Americans sheds light on the 'forgotten years'...

"Wine lovers, these 50 hikes are for you! From dramatic vineyards in the Alps to stunning lakeside wineries, this guide will help you discover the extraordinary and diverse landscape of Swiss wine. The 50 hikes follow routes chosen for their beauty through Switzerland's leading wine regions. Every single one of them ends with a visit to an excellent Swiss winemaker. Wine writer Ellen Wallace has crisscrossed the country by trail and track, and her...

"Magic Universe brings current science to the general reader in an imaginative and wholly original way. It offers an exhilarating tour of the horizons of knowledge, from quarks to linguistics, climate change to cloning, and chaos to superstrings, presented as a set of self-contained stories. The stories are arranged as A-Z entries, but this is not a conventional encyclopedia: each story unfolds in a totally unpredictable way, seamlessly crossing disciplines,...

"Athens, Greece May Day 2010. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) were putting together the final details of a 100-billion Euro rescue package for the country. The Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou had agreed to a savage package of austerity measures involving cuts in public spending and lower salaries and pensions. Outside, riot police were deployed, as protesters gathered to fight the austerity program. A country...