While the Music Lasts: A Memoir of Music, Grief & Joy

An illuminating, witty and highly moving story of making and listening to music and its role and impact on grief. 

‘It’s curious that we don’t really understand why music is able to tip us over the edge. If you want to feel totally overpowered by grief, reach for some music.
‘If you want to feel close to the person who’s died, there’s music that will take you there. That’s because music is a thing we inhabit … And it’s seriously powerful. But it’s not always desirable. It starts to feel like you can come apart anywhere.’

After her jazz guitarist father’s sudden death, Emily MacGregor, a music historian and trombonist, finds herself unable to listen to, let alone play, study or enjoy, music. It is only when she starts to work through the pieces left behind on her father’s music stand – a journey from tangos to Handel, Cádiz to Coltrane – that she begins to understand why her body and mind are rejecting the thing that bound them, and she is able leave the numb silence behind and find joy in sound once again.