Strings Attached, Joanne Lipman
Strings Attached, Joanne Lipman
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
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Strings Attached
One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations

Author: Joanne Lipman

Narrator: Kathleen McInerney, Eliza Foss

Unabridged: 10 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Balance

Published: 10/01/2013

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

THE FINE ART OF TOUGH LOVE.

If you're lucky, somewhere in your past is that one person who changed your life forever. The one who pushed you to dream bigger and to reach higher, and who set you straight on what matters in life. Perhaps it was a coach, or a professor, or a family friend.

For Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky, that person was a public-school music teacher, Jerry Kupchynsky, known as Mr. K--a Ukrainian-born taskmaster who yelled and stomped and screamed, and who drove his students harder than anyone had ever driven them before. Through sheer force of will, he made them better than they had any right to be.

Strings Attached tells the inspiring, poignant, and powerful story of this remarkable man, whose life seemed to conspire against him at every turn and yet who was able to transform his own heartache into triumph for his students.

Lyrically recounted by two former students -- acclaimed journalist Joanne Lipman and Mr. K's daughter, Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Melanie Kupchynsky -- Strings Attached takes you on a journey that spans from his days as a forced Nazi laborer and his later home life as a husband to an invalid wife, to his heart-breaking search for his missing daughter, Melanie's sister.

This is an unforgettable tale -- a captivating narrative that is as absorbing as fiction -- about the power of a great teacher, but also about the legacy that remains long after the last note has faded into silence: lessons in resilience, excellence, and tough love.

Strings Attached is for anyone indebted to a mentor and for those devoted to igniting excellence in others.

About Joanne Lipman

Joanne Lipman has authored a pioneering journalism career. She was the first female Deputy Managing Editor at the Wall Street Journal, where she created the Weekend Journal and Personal Journal sections and oversaw the creation of the paper’s Saturday edition. She was founding editor-in-chief of Conde Nast Portfolio magazine. And she served as Editor-in-Chief at USA Today and Chief Content Officer at Gannet. Under her editorship, she led these organizations to numerous awards, including six Pulitzer Prizes. Dubbed “star editor” by CNN, she is author of the No. 1 national bestseller That’s What She Said, about closing the gender gap, and coauthor of the music memoir Strings Attached. She is a lecturer at Yale University’s Department of Political Science and was the Peretsman Scully Distinguished Journalism Fellow at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study. Lipman is a contributor to CNBC.


Reviews

Goodreads review by E. C. on October 17, 2013

Think Mr. Holland's Opus meets Chinatown and you've got an idea of the story arc of Strings Attached. As told by his daughter/master violinist and his student/deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, Strings Attached provides several first-hand accounts of an irascible music teacher's expl......more

Goodreads review by Elaine on October 02, 2013

This book is at once a portrait of the Kupchynsky family, a memoir about growing up and "coming of age" in New Jersey between the 1960s and the 1980s, and the story of a man who, deprived of a childhood, came to love music as a young adult, and gave his children and thousands of other children the o......more

Goodreads review by Reindert on June 20, 2019

An interesting insight in the life of a dedicated music teacher. I liked the musical references and the way the bonding which making music together was illustrated. However, the story line was a bit vague, as there is not really a plot, more a description of people their lives.......more

Goodreads review by Mj on January 25, 2015

Strings Attached is a biography about Jarema “Jerry” Kupchynsky or Mr. K as he was known to his music students. This book was co-written by two former students – his daughter Melanie Kupchynsky, currently a violinist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Joanne Lipman, who learned to play the cell......more

Goodreads review by Margaret on October 26, 2013

I purchased this book on October 4, started it on October 5 and finished it on October 6. Then I reread the book. I have not read a book this quickly in years; neither have I read a book and then immediately reread it. The authors, Joanne Lipmann and Melanie Kupchynsky, capture with beauty and poign......more