“Ste­vie Won­der, the awardee of the sec­ond Library of Con­gress Gersh­win Prize for Pop­u­lar Song, pre­mieres “Sketch­es of a Life,” a sprawl­ing, hybrid pop-clas­si­cal con­cer­to, writ­ten between 1976 and 1994. The work was unveiled through a com­mis­sion for the Library of Con­gress in the Coolidge Audi­to­ri­um.” The per­for­mance was record­ed on Feb­ru­ary 23, and it runs 55 min­utes. You can watch it here.

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A quick find worth pass­ing along… 

Although some­what uncon­ven­tion­al as far as mem­oirs go, Chron­i­cles: Vol­ume One recap­tures Bob Dylan’s “first stir­rings of cre­ativ­i­ty with amaz­ing urgency” (as Janet Maslin once put it) , and brings you to places that the nor­mal Dylan biog­ra­phy won’t. It brings you back to the small moments that shaped Dylan’s ear­ly days as a musi­cian in New York, and to the intel­lec­tu­al and musi­cal influ­ences that framed his way of see­ing things: Thu­cidy­des, Hank Williams, Dos­to­evsky, Woody Guthrie, John Locke and Jean Genet. I down­loaded the audio book ver­sion of Chron­i­cles over the week­end and was per­haps most cap­ti­vat­ed by the nar­ra­tion record­ed by Sean Penn, the new­ly-mint­ed Acad­e­my Award win­ner. Penn is not play­ing a role here. But, at points, you think you’re lis­ten­ing to Dylan him­self, which makes it a rather unique audio expe­ri­ence. You can down­load the audio book for $13.65. But, you could also poten­tial­ly get it for free.  Audi­ble runs a reg­u­lar pro­mo­tion that lets you down­load two books for free if you sign up for a 14 day free tri­al. Get the details here.

For many free audio books, check out our col­lec­tion here.