In Cádiz -- A music stand -- Tunes for ten fingers -- Kinds of blue -- Oblivion, with Nadia Boulanger -- The right instrument for your child -- 'Elegy for Mippy II' and other dogs (mine) -- Silence -- Rumores de la caleta -- Unfinished symphony -- Castles made of sand -- Bells -- Dies Irae and hardcore death dances -- Gustav Mahler, Alma Schindler and songs for lost dreams -- Playing Chopin (badly) -- Open strings and underwhelming flamenco -- Memories of a journey -- John/Ravi Coltrane, 'Giant Steps' in New York.

After her jazz guitarist father’s sudden death, Emily MacGregor, a music historian and trombonist, finds herself unable to listen to, let alone play, study or enjoy, music. It is only when she starts to work through the pieces left behind on her father’s music stand – a journey from tangos to Handel, Cádiz to Coltrane – that she begins to understand why her body and mind are rejecting the thing that bound them, and she is able leave the numb silence behind and find joy in sound once again.