As I've mentioned before, I like to listen to the New York Times commentator and podcaster Ezra Klein while I take my afternoon walk. The other day he was talking about developing our own tastes in this crazy world of internet optimization with New Yorker staffwriter Kyle Chayka, who has just published a book titled Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture.
In the conversation, Ezra described wanting to learn more about classical music, and finally, through a lot of work—talking to people, reading books, getting Spotify recommendations, and just listening—discovering the music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and then Carolyn Shaw and Nico Muhly, which really spoke to him—caused, as he put it, "a reaction," "a very strong sense." One piece in particular struck him to his core, Peter Gregson's quartet "II. Warmth."
Later, Ezra mentioned another musician, Fred again.., a British record producer, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and DJ who in 2023 was nominated for a Best New Artist grammy—and his Tiny Desk Concert.
Well, I do enjoy the Tiny Desk Concerts, which NPR started producing in 2008. But I tend to listen to artists I already know. I thought, hmm, I should check out this Fred fellow, and maybe scan the list of recent Desk Concerts, give them a try—learn something new.
So I started this evening with Fred again..—which I really, really like:
In the comments to this video, he writes: "I spent weeks practising this and learning instruments I hadn’t played for years to try n make this as special as I possibly could. EVVERRRYYYY thing you hear in this I play totally live. And there are some sounds I really couldn’t believe we were able to make like this. Its one of my favourite things ive ever been a part of 💜"
And now I need to find out more about Carolyn Shaw and Nico Muhly. And follow up on my intention to hear more Tiny Desk Concerts: of the most recent couple dozen, all but one of the artists are entirely unfamiliar to me. So much to explore!
These will not redefine my own taste in music—but they might help expand it a bit. I'm all for that.
No comments:
Post a Comment