t h e b o o k
Infinity Publishing presents
singer/songwriter Angela Carole Brown's debut novel
TRADING FOURS
A story of four musicians whose lives collide in a single day
Honorable mentions in/by:
Music Connection Magazine, Vol. XXIX, No.22
National League of Women, as an example of Women in Fiction
On Trading Fours
"...Ms. Brown is an
extraordinarily talented writer who has an almost preternatural ability to
bring music alive on the printed page, writing from the perspective of
musician and audience with equal skill and realism. She is clearly well
versed and educated in the underpinnings of music theory, but never for a
moment does she lose her sure grip on the soul of what drives
people to make music.
"Trading Fours
is set in Los Angeles, centering on four musicians. There is Tristan, a
gifted guitarist in his fifties whose son has just signed a record deal;
Chloe, a talented singer who has grown increasingly disillusioned with her
long-time relationship with Julian, a revered and arrogant guitarist.
There is Nick Brandt, an exceptional pianist and near-hopeless alcoholic.
And there is Seth, musician and caretaker of the aging legend Hayes
DeWitt, who had received a heart transplant months before, and which his
body is busily rejecting. When not working on his own musical projects,
Seth has organized a benefit for Hayes to help pay his medical bill.
"The world that Ms. Brown paints is both interesting and depressing, with a
sense of independence among these musicians battling with an undercurrent
of the encroaching rot of the ordinary. For any fan of music, Ms. Brown’s
insights from the inside of the music scene are riveting and enlightening.
Having played guitar, myself, for about twenty-five years and having been
a rabid music fan for even longer, I thought I knew a few things about
music. Whatever I thought I knew, Ms. Brown’s book has added to it
considerably. She goes inside the mind and talents of gifted guitarists
and prodigious pianists and bears like Masonic secrets the amorphous
currents of inspiration and devotion that keep musicians going back to
their axes and audiences.
"The storyline involving Hayes DeWitt and his protégé,
Seth, is particularly moving. At aged sixty-four, that magical age made
famous in the Beatles song, he is an L.A. legend who has not only played
with most of the jazz greats, but has been covered by some of the greatest
musicians ever to play jazz. He is gruff and unwell, his right leg nearly
rotting off due to the battery of drugs he is on to prevent his body from
rejecting his new heart. The reverence with which the other characters
refer to Hayes are the ultimate props one musician could pay another.
"For all of Ms. Brown’s expertise in conveying the mystery and
intangibility of music, she is equally adept at evoking her characters’
emotional lives. The people populating the pages of Trading Fours
are fully fleshed-out three dimensional human beings, who had lives before
the opening of the novel, and whose lives continue after the final page.
This is no mystery novel or thrill-ride suspense, but the lives of each
character are so vivid and well rendered, and enormously engrossing.
"Trading Fours is an expertly written story about
passion, ambition, envy, and each person’s struggle and need to make some
sort of impact in this world, in this life. Ms. Angela Carole Brown is an
amazing writer with a gift for dialogue and engaging the reader on a deep,
visceral level."
––– Matt St. Amand, author of RANDHAM ACTS
September, 2006
(Excerpt from the article "Jazz Encounters of the Literary Kind")
"Perhaps one of the most
under-explored aspects of jazz literature is fiction. There is an
abundance of jazz product in the form of audio and DVD formatted
recordings tumbling out on to the record store shelves and on the
internet. There has also been a growing body of novels and short story
work that makes jazz musicians a central theme. Los Angeles-based jazz
chanteuse, writer and visual artist Angela Carole Brown belongs securely
to this tradition. Her recent novel Trading Fours (Infinity
Publishing) is set in a day in the lives of four LA musicians who make
their living hacking away at an artistic seam called the ‘casual’. Whether
it is corporate social events, Bar Mitzvahs, weddings and miscellaneous
events calling for musicians-for-hire, Nick, Seth, Chloe, and Tristan take
them all in their rhythmic stride – and still have to deal with the
workaday issues of paying the bills and the rent and negotiating the
minefields of personal relationships. Trading Fours deals with
brilliant musicians who, oftentimes because of their lack of being
well-connected, do not get the breaks they deserve.
"Trading Fours is in few respects, a triumphant
meeting ground of art and sociology - a meeting ground as familiar in 2007
as it was in 1927, and one which it is hoped will receive even more
insight and attention in 2008 and beyond."
––– John Stevenson, EJAZZNEWS, England
January 1, 2008
He sits at the bar of the downtown Orchid Club on . . .
While fully engaged in the pursuit of her career as a novelist . . .
© 2007 by Angela Carole Brown