FREE: Words on Music by a Hi-Def Critic in an MP3 World

To mark the publication of his new book, FREE: Words on Music by a Hi-Def Critic in an MP3 World, award-winning music producer, critic and translator Lawrence Schulman will talk about the work, which is a collection of his reviews on numerous 20th-century artists of the Great American Songbook, including Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin, country singer Patsy Cline, and others who may be less known to music lovers, such as Maxine Sullivan, Tim Buckley and Peter Allen. He will show clips of all the artists he will talk about and then take questions and autograph copies of FREE, which will be on sale in conjunction with Sherman's Maine Coast Book Shop in Bar Harbor.

This event is available to attend in-person or online. Attendees should note that the sound quality will be significantly better in-person, so we recommend attending at the library.

Lawrence Schulman, a graduate of Stony Brook University, the Sorbonne and CREAR, a school for film and video studies in Gouvieux, France, is a music producer, critic and translator who has compiled numerous CD sets devoted to Judy Garland in the past three decades. A collector and audiophile, Schulman has worked with such distinguished mastering engineers as Robert Parker, Jon M. Samuels, Gary Galo, Peter Rynston, Robin Cherry, Peter Reynolds, Nick Dellow, and Richard Moore. His talk on Garland, “Moments of Magic,” has been heard in New York, Boston, and various venues in Maine, where he resides. While living in Paris between 1971 and 1997, he taught and translated, and currently translates for the French website OpusHD.net, which specializes in classical high-resolution recordings. During his Paris years he also worked for French Public Radio as a producer and host. He has written sound recording and book reviews for the ARSC Journal since 1994, as well as three original articles, including one on the late songwriter-singer Peter Allen which won the 2024 ARSC Journal Best Article of the Year award. His most recent CDs are Judy Garland: A Celebration (Trapeze/Acrobat, 2024), Judy Garland: The Two-A-Day Is Back in Town, Closing Night at the Palace, February 24, 1952 (JSP Records, 2023), Judy Garland—The Lost Vegas Show (High Definition Tape Transfers, 2023), Judy Garland—The Final Concert In Copenhagen (High Definition Tape Transfers, 2022), Judy Garland—The Greatest Night in Show Business History, Carnegie Hall, April 23, 1961(High Definition Tape Transfers, 2022), Classic Concert Series: Judy At Carnegie Hall - Judy In Person (AVID, 2022), and Judy Garland—Live in Paris, 1960 (Frémeaux & Associés, 2022). His translation from the French of Bertrand Tessier’s Judy Garland: Splendor and Downfall of a Legend, for which he also provided a Foreword, was published by BearManor Media in early 2023 and his own two-volume book, Garland—That’s Beyond Entertainment—Reflections on Judy Garland, with a Foreword by former ARSC Journal sound recordings editor, lawyer and audio engineer John H. Haley and an Afterword by longtime ARSC Journal reviewer, professor and author James Fisher, was published by BearManor Media later in 2023. FREE was published by BearManor in 2024, and his forthcoming book entitled Peter Allen: Somebody's Angel - The Boy From Oz In The Key of Camp will be published by BearManor in early 2025.