Now You Can Take Off Your Clothes

Now You Can Take Off Your Clothes: Vignettes of an American Conductor Lost in Translation chronicles the often hilarious exploits, both on and off the podium, of a conductor and college professor while practicing his craft abroad. Some thirty-nine vignettes - many of them humorous, some more serious - are recounted within a fifteen-chapter framework. Written for the general reader as well as musicians, the book covers a thirty-five-year period and is arranged more-or-less chronologically. Here are many vicissitudes of life, from being awakened by a real gunshot in the next room to being shot at by a chamber maid pretending to kill Al Capone with her imaginary automatic weapon, from being the recipient of lavish praise to being dripped upon while sitting in a Russian Aeroflot plane, from being entertained in a ship's nightclub by a Bulgarian keyboard player who doubled as a tap dancer to cringing while a skirted cymbal player crashed his instruments between his legs. It's all there, and much more - and all of it is true.