Piano Girl: A Memoir
Publishers Weekly Starred Review: “Goldsby has a wicked sense of humor and a keen eye for the absurd. This is a bighearted, funny, truly eye-opening memoir.”
Book Sense Picks and Notables (Best Paperbacks of Summer, 2006) "Piano Girl is outstanding! Goldsby's sense of rhythm in her writing is as elegant as her piano playing. As refreshing as a frozen daiquiri . . .”
Ernie Rideout, Keyboard Magazine: “One of the funniest reads I’ve had in a long time, and each of the nearly 50 brief chapters can stand on its own as a model short story, complete with moral.”
Marian McPartland: “One of the funniest books ever!”
Piano Girl is the story of one woman's accidental career as a cocktail-lounge piano player. Sometimes poignant and often hilarious, this engaging memoir reveals the comedies, tragedies, and mundane miracles witnessed from the business side of the keyboard. A pianist in lounges and lobbies around the world, Robin Meloy Goldsby tells her story by connecting the people she has met with the places she has played and the pianos she has known. Along the way she discovers the human side, for better or worse, of her audiences - mobsters and moguls, the down-and-out and downright scary, and ordinary people dealing with life in extraordinary ways.
Author appearances have included:
All Things Considered (NPR), 15 minute interview with Jennifer Ludden
The Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC), 15 minute interview
NPR’s Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland (one hour feature)
Steinway Hall Rotunda, New York City
Salt Lake City International Jazz Festival
US Consulate, Duesseldorf
Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, Berlin
Joseph Beth Bookstores, USA
Waldorf Astoria, New York City (press launch)
ISBN-10: 0879308826
ISBN-13: 978-0879308827
278 pages
published by Backbeat Books, a division of Hal Leonard
