Sounding Brass

An extraordinary tale of a collaboration between a composing prodigy and a Washington politician, the story of how a Thai schoolboy came to create the entire oevre of an American composer is fabulous in the true sense of the world … a modern mythic journey.   A true story … yet one that beggars belief … with cameo appearances by all sorts of members of the Washington “swamp” … and the odd science fiction writer dropping in for a chat.… “It’s a story about the human need to want to break boundaries and exceed limitations.  It’s about dreams and aspirations, and in the end we need to ask questions about the very nature of art and about why we as humans need art in our lives. “It is also the story of two people from vastly divergent cultures, two people who both, perhaps, felt alienated from the people and situations that surrounded them, and who came to share a strangely intimate bond.” A never-before-told secret history, this memoir by the first Asian to be awarded the European Cultural Achievement Award is an eye-opener.  

Chapter One: An Elevator in Farragut Square 

Chapter Two: A Rembrandt above the Sofa 

Chapter Three: An Epiphany on a Loaf 

Chapter Four: A Sonata with a Minister 

Chapter Five: A Tea-Break with a Queen 

Chapter Six: A Brush with Religion 

Chapter Seven: A Crusader in Cambridge 

Chapter Eight: An Exorcism in the Suburbs 

Chapter Nine: A Circumstance without Pomp 

Chapter Ten: A Diva with a Dagger 

Chapter Eleven: An Intruder in the Pentagon 

Chapter Twelve: An Intermezzo in Bangkok 

Chapter Thirteen:  A Symphony in McLean 

Chapter Fourteen: An Ellis Island of the Mind 

Chapter Fifteen:  A Gaucho in the Kennedy Center 

Chapter Sixteen: A Burnout in Alexandria 

Chapter Eighteen: A Journey to the West 

Chapter Nineteen: A Lesson in Mythmaking