{"product_id":"restrung-a-memoir-of-music-and-transformation","title":"Restrung: A Memoir of Music and Transformation","description":"\n\u003ctable align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"productDetailSmallElements\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Restrung\u003c\/i\u003e is a singular, transfixing document of Vijay Gupta's mission to make music in a way that matters to people who live on society's margins. In place of comfortable clichés about the healing powers of art, Gupta gives us a vision that is at once brutally honest and passionately hopeful. Every page burns with moral conviction.\"\u003c\/p\u003e-- \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eAlex Ross, author of The Rest Is Noise\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"What an astonishing courageous symphonic book. \n\u003ci\u003eRestrung \u003c\/i\u003eis a true gift--to be cherished to be talked about to be shared with everyone you know.\"-- \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eJunot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Ten years ago, I was watching a 1996 episode of \n\u003ci\u003eReading Rainbow\u003c\/i\u003e with my son when I found myself captivated by the intensity of a bespectacled 8-year-old violin prodigy. I desperately wanted to know what became of this kid--did he conquer the world or have a complete breakdown? The kid was Vijay Gupta, and \n\u003ci\u003eRestrung\u003c\/i\u003e is his story: a memoir about classical music, family, and surviving what we call 'The American Dream.'\"-- \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eAustin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"As Vijay Gupta tells the story of his privileged yet painful and always remarkable life, we realize what a struggle it is for anyone to recognize the full extent of their own suffering. As we see Gupta turn his immense talent into healing himself and others, his journey becomes a motive for healing ourselves.\"-- \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eArthur W. Frank, author of At the Will of the Body and The Wounded Storyteller\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"This magnificent book is a chaconne, a journey through music and love and possibility that might change your life. Honest, heartfelt, and powerful. I couldn't put it down.\"-- \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eSeth Godin, author of The Song of Significance\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBiographical Note\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eVijay Gupta\u003c\/b\u003e is an acclaimed violinist and the founding Artistic Director of Street Symphony, the nonprofit that brings live music into shelters, clinics, jails, and prisons, hailed by \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e as \"a formidable new model for how musical institutions should engage with the world around them.\" A former member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a MacArthur Fellow, and named to \u003ci\u003eTIME\u003c\/i\u003e's 100 Next list, Gupta has shared the role of music in human connection and responsibility on stages, campuses, and with organizations across the nation, including The Richmond Forum, the American Medical Association, the U.S. Psychiatric Congress, Harvard Business School, and companies such as Accenture and Hallmark. He lives in Altadena, California. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Authentic transformation occurs in unlikely places. Read this book. It is much more than a memoir. It is a powerful invitation to affirm that to be credentialed and celebrated makes our parents happy, but is most often a distraction from our own soul and communal sense of purpose. \u003ci\u003eRestrung\u003c\/i\u003e is a story of where fine art and low status street people, including us, need and serve each other. It is also an intimate glimpse of the pain of coming to a strange culture and how this is most often a gift to where they have landed.\"\u003c\/p\u003e-- \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter Block, author of Community: The Structure of Belonging\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"With an open heart and sometimes brutal self-awareness, Gupta effectively illustrates how music ''reaches the broken places within us and the broken places between us.' It's a virtuoso performance.\"-- \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher's Weekly\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Vijay shows us how important it is not to confuse music with the institutions that perform it. Music can be a career, but it doesn't have to be; and perhaps we must rethink the very idea of a career. In its purest form, music exists as the best way to communicate that which cannot be expressed in words. Music is greater and more universal than any institution. Vijay challenges our conventional, calcified ideas about art and society, and most important: he walks the walk.\"-- \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eEsa-Pekka Salonen, composer, Creative Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Principal Conductor of the Orchestre de Paris\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Gupta writes as beautifully as he plays, and he shares all his doubts, painful relationships, and well-intentioned moments. The real gift here is his ability to also relay his connections with music and his audience. This is magical.\"\u003c\/p\u003e-- \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBooklist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Vijay Gupta is a humanist in the deepest, fullest, and most beautiful sense. With him, music is an opening into the largest and most intimate questions of human life. He models and teaches us how to hold courage, grace, pleasure, yearning, and the truths that each of us is carrying, gently at the very tips of our fingers. He starts playing, and you are playing with him, and honesty, understanding, and transformation begin to move through every person in the room, and into the world.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e -- \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter Sellars\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Spinning a personal narrative into something more is one of our most primal forms of storytelling. In his new book, \u003ci\u003eRestrung: A Memoir of Music and Transformation\u003c\/i\u003e, Vijay Gupta does just that. He threads together an assemblage of personal history, musicological vignette, and social critique with radical emotional vulnerability, and what emerges is a swirling portrait of one person's messy and beautiful journey with music, family, and gratitude. ... this book is well worth your time and your heart.\"\u003c\/p\u003e-- \n\u003cb\u003eAndrew Braddock\u003c\/b\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eAmerican Suzuki Journal\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher Marketing\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eViolinist Vijay Gupta's searing memoir of prodigy, ambition, collapse, and renewal reveals how music is not just performance but also survival, a lifeline of human connection--for readers of Jeremy Denk's \u003ci\u003eEvery Good Boy Does Fine\u003c\/i\u003e, Hua Hsu's \u003ci\u003eStay True\u003c\/i\u003e, and Patrick Bringley's \u003ci\u003eAll the Beauty in the World\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e By age twenty-five, Vijay Gupta had lived several lifetimes: he played Carnegie Hall at eight, studied at Juilliard and Yale before most had finished high school, joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at nineteen, gave a celebrated TED Talk seen by millions, and launched a nonprofit. But behind the accolades was estrangement, addiction, and a private unraveling. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eRestrung\u003c\/i\u003e is Gupta's unflinching memoir of breaking apart and remaking a self. It begins with a boy raised between the strict devotion of Bengali immigrant parents and the ruthless demands of the conservatory. It follows him through the shimmering world of elite orchestras, into the depths of burnout, and ultimately toward an unexpected reawakening--where he discovered that the music he'd spent his life studying was seen not as a curio of high culture or mere entertainment, but a lifeline of connection--most vividly in Skid Row, where people living through addiction, homelessness, and incarceration heard it as survival itself. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e There, audiences spoke to how they saw their own lives reflected in the stories of composers too often frozen into marble busts: the rage of Beethoven, the fragility of Schumann's mind, the alienation of Bartók, the plight of Handel--who wrote Messiah bankrupt, ill, and broken, yet transformed despair into an enduring Hallelujah. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eRestrung\u003c\/i\u003e unsettles assumptions about success while illuminating how art restores not just audiences, but artists themselves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations:\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/span\u003e 04\/20\/2026 (EAN 9780306835964, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003eBooklist\u003c\/span\u003e 06\/01\/2026 (EAN 9780306835964, Hardcover) - *Starred Review\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n","brand":"Da Capo","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51496130216214,"sku":"9780306835964","price":36.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0857\/9910\/8886\/files\/9780306835964.jpg?v=1783053654","url":"https:\/\/lusper.myshopify.com\/products\/restrung-a-memoir-of-music-and-transformation","provider":"Lusperbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}