This week, Montreal author and music writer Sean Michaels took home the most lucrative literary prize in Canada - the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize - for his debut novel Us Conductors.
The novel is a dreamed-up version of the life of Lev Sergeyevich Termen, a Russian scientist and inventor of the theremin, and takes him from 1930s New York Clubs to the gulags of the Soviet Union.
When the novel was first released in May, CBC Music asked Michaels for a playlist of songs that reflected the themes of his book. You can find them in the gallery, along with Michaels' comments.
But first, here is his introduction.
In April, I published a novel called Us Conductors, a kind of dreamed-up version of the story of Lev Sergeyevich Termen, inventor of the theremin. Termen was a real person, a Russian scientist who brushed shoulders with Jazz Age greats and some of the greatest classical composers of the early 20th century. But I'm a writer and music critic living 100 years later, someone who loves Robyn as much as Rachmaninoff, and this story of longing, electricity and espionage is as shaded by modern sounds as by dusty 78s.
Here's a collection of songs that seems part of the same conversation as Us Conductors, even if they aren't all of the same time.
Click on the gallery to begin. And here are two related interviews on CBC:
by Jennifer Van Evra via Electronic RSS
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