The Invisible Architect

The author of the critically acclaimed “bible” of contemporary keyboard playing, The Contemporary Keyboardist, now brings students 86 studies that cover 17 contemporary keyboard styles – jazz, rock, funk, Latin, country, stride, blues, pop, gospel, and many more. This pack includes notes on playing, and both a CD and a General MIDI disk featuring recordings of each etude for the student to play along with.

This DVD presents an informative and organized approach to rhythm, improvisation and blues. Exercises and demonstrations enhance the learning experience. Includes: playing in time • sight-reading rhythms • basic rhythms and their permutations • rushing and dragging • an innovative approach to the basics of improvisation • the blues and basic blues forms. Intermediate level. 56 minutes.

When his jazz singer wife Gloria Rusch died of cancer in January, 2000, acclaimed keyboardist/author John Novello found he was not alone. Gloria was still there, shining resplendently from a higher reality, to guide him through his own spiritual awakening.

One of the great love stories of our time, The Song That Never Ended unfolds against the glittering backdrop of the Los Angeles music world of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Through its pages pass a dazzling array of celebrity performers: Stevie Wonder, Billy Sheehan, Donna Summer, Chick Corea, Ritchie Cole, Manhattan Transfer, A Taste of Honey, and many more. Master of the Hammond B3 organ John Novello and virtuoso jazz singer Gloria Rusch are a part of this glowing tapestry of gifted artists. During this period they meet, fall in love, marry and pursue their careers both individually and together—until, in 1999, Gloria falls ill with a virulent form of breast cancer. For over a year, Gloria battles the disease with every spiritual weapon at her disposal. Never far from her side, her husband John seeks out a wide range of alternative and conventional treatments that take the couple as far afield as Mexico and Germany. Finally, Gloria succumbs. But the vast celebration of life that is The Song That Never Ended has only just begun. In the long and mesmerizing final section, John Novello describes for us his post-death ‘interdimensional’ communications with Gloria. He details his astonishing “contact sessions” with five celebrated mediums—encounters that convinced the musician/author that Gloria was still beside him. The Song That Never Ended ends on a note of high serenity and aching beauty: the realization by John Novello that death has not denied the love of Gloria and himself, and that it need not deny the love of any of us.