Ed Zubrow wrote:

>At dinner the other night a dear friend of ours stunned me with the
>revelation that she is starting to be intrigued by classical music, and
>wants to know more.

Well, I have to apologize if my first note made it up to the forum, because
it responded to an introduction and I mistakenly thought this was about
introductions and how we were led to music ourselves and that our ages had
something to do with it.  I was obviously reading out of order!

I think the NPR Guide book and Jim Svejda's book with Mitch Miller are
good starter guides and for that reason included them in my page of
"Newer Classical Music Books" at http://andrys.com/cbooks.html

I personally am inclined to make tapes or CDRs of my own favorites
depending on the kind of music others like (upbeat, dreamy, simple,
complex) and then when friends listen to that I can get an idea of what
they like and recommend from those...

We now have mp3.com if our friends have computers and speakers and a decent
modem connection.  I have a "Station" at mp3.com which lets me just present
and direct friends to tracks there that I especially like.  This is at
http://mp3.com/stations/classical_oasis There is an underscore between
"classical" and "oasis"

Listeners can click on LoFi to play if they have a normal modem and on HiFi
if they have a fast_internet connection.  'Download' means to bring the mp3
soundfile to your computer and play it from there instead.  The files can
be large but they'll sound better that way though they can take forever to
get if you choose 'Download' instead of "Play LoFi/HiFi " due to modem
connections.

If after hearing a piece they like, people click on a person's name,
they'll get that performer's main site and they can hear for free many
composers and shorter, or longer, works played by that performer.  It's a
goldmine as far as I'm concerned.  And a great way to find out what music
interests you most.

Fiorentino's main page is separated by composer.  Most pages take a lonnnng
time to load because mp3.com doesn't let the performers break up their main
webpages.  But if you find yourself luckily at a text-listing by that
performer, then you can choose the first link and go from there.

Andrys in Berkeley
http://andrys.com/books.html#dvdexpr - Classical Music DVDs
http://andrys.com/coupons.html - Coupons, Sales