The Musician's Way aims to combine the author's professional experience as a performer and teacher with the latest research to guide students' musical development. This volume is divided into three sections: Artful Practice (Part I), Fearless Performance (Part II) and Lifelong Creativity (Part III). Artful Practice gives advice on how to prepare for practice and to collaborate with others as well as devoting four chapters to techniques for thorough practice. Fearless Performance deals with issues that occur before, during and following performance, such as performance anxiety, stage behaviour and performance evaluation. The final section, Lifelong Creativity, provides guidance on injury prevention and how to succeed as a student. A website, musiciansway.com, accompanies the book and hosts downloadable resources and links to related sites.

The main strength of this book lies in the depth with which the author engages with the processes of practising and performing. The comprehensive way in which these topics are covered provides students with clear guidance to support many aspects of their musicianship. By following this guidance, students should achieve a solid musical foundation from which they can continue to develop. Throughout this book a good balance is struck between specificity and generality; the techniques suggested are universal enough to be adopted by both instrumentalists and singers, but are sufficiently targeted to make a significant difference to the individual.

The Musician's Way reaches its target audience of first-year undergraduate music students very well. The content is suitably advanced to meet the needs of students working at this level and provides a wealth of information that would otherwise take several years to accrue. Klickstein states that ‘your musical progress will depend more on your skilfulness with the creative process than on any talent’ (p. 313). Through the use of appropriate case studies and musical and technical interventions pitched at the right level, this philosophy becomes ultimately believable.

The accompaniment of a website to this book is a useful resource. Materials used in the book, such as practice logs, are available to download and there are links to numerous online articles that can support students' musical development more widely. For students who may be preparing to make the transition to professional musician, this website provides the means to access the opinions and practices of individuals who are already part of the professional community.

There are several issues, however, that detract somewhat from the achievements of The Musician's Way. Most significant is the capacity of this book to combine the latest research with the author's professional experience. Engagement with research is superficial at best and only a sentence or two is used to describe any one piece of work. When compared with Aaron Williamon's (Reference WILLIAMON2004) Musical Excellence, which provides detailed reviews of theory and research to inform musicianship, the current volume is disappointing. Relevant research is cited in The Musician's Way, but more thorough discussions are needed for it to be of use to music students.

The overall structure of The Musician's Way appears simple enough, but occasionally it is hard to understand why certain topics have been placed together in chapters. For example, it is unclear why in Practicing Deeply III, a general section on taking breaks when practising lies between two specifically musical sections looking at developing concert repertoire and memorisation. The reader is left with a lack of clarity about what the chapter as a whole is trying to achieve. Additionally, chapter titles are not always informative as in the cases of Practicing Deeply I, II, III and IV. Readers may be able to locate the section they require with greater ease if chapter titles were less generic. The writing style of The Musician's Way is accessible and this is particularly commendable in a book targeting students. However, there are occasions where the informality of tone obscures the author's argument and phrases such as ‘practice with your effort meter far out of the struggle zone’ (p. 21) may not be to everyone's taste.

To summarise, there are several limitations of this work, but as a source of practical information to support students' musical learning, The Musician's Way contains much that is valuable.