What is Colin Listening to this Month? - August 2021
Welcome to the second installment of this monthly series on my blog where I highlight five pieces of music I have had on repeat this past month! The goal of this blog is to promote new music and my friends and colleagues, but I am not excluding older music or more popular styles (as you will certainly see today). I hope you check out all these fabulous artists!
1. Nico Muhly, The Only Tune (2007)
I will admit, Nico Muhly’s music is a bit hit or miss for me. But his collaborations with Sam Amidon are nothing short of some of the most beautiful music ever written. This is a modern reworking of an old murder ballad called The Two Sisters, which has become a bluegrass standard. As you may know from my piece Dream States, bluegrass/folk music is incredibly close to my heart and The Only Tune is the type of piece I wish I could write. The emotional breadth of this piece is massive, exploring the horror of the story before it all crashes into something much more bittersweet and devastating.
2. Ida Maria, Oh My God (2007)
Well I did say not all of this was going to be the most esoteric music, didn’t I? To be honest I’m not sure what it is about this song that just gets me every time. The lyrics and musical material (while effective) are quite repetitive, but Ida Maria completely sells it and explores different vocal timbres in an engaging way. Oh My God is a perfect example of my fundamental belief that complexity doesn’t automatically make a piece of music good; passion does.
3. Alain Goraguer, La Planète Sauvage (1973)
Rene Laloux’s La Planète Sauvage (Fantastic Planet) is one of my favorite films ever made, and the score is a large factor in that. The gorgeous psychedelic images Laloux treats the viewer to marry perfectly with the sound world Goraguer creates, and to be honest I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered any film where the score and visuals complement one another so beautifully. It’s a fantastic score and a really cool film that everyone should watch.
4. Yunfei Li, Circling (2019)
I’m thrilled to have the incredible opportunity to be writing a work for Duo Entre-nous, a new music-focused ensemble formed by clarinetist Jackie Glazier (my professor during my undergrad) and saxophonist Don-Paul Kahl. Duo Entre-nous recently released their first album, Fresh Ink, and I have been listening to all the wonderful new pieces included on the album quite a lot in preparation of writing my own work for the ensemble.
I had the pleasure of meeting Yunfei Li virtually in May at the TURNUP Festival, and have loved all the works I have heard by her. Circling is such a high energy piece with memorable themes and motives that constantly get stuck in my head. It’s a highlight for me on an album that consists entirely of sublime works by living composers.
5. Michael Nyman, Drowning by Numbers (1988)
I suppose this has been a month of film scores, which is fitting given that one of my current projects is incidental music for a screenplay by Graham Knapman! I first encountered the filmmaker Peter Greenaway last year with his 1989 masterpiece The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover, and it immediately cemented itself as one of my personal favorite films. What shocked me most was how beautiful the look of the film and the score by Michael Nyman were, given that all I knew about it beforehand was how uncompromising the violence and sexual content were.
Shortly after seeing it, I watched the film he made prior, Drowning by Numbers and while it didn’t hit me quite as hard as the Cook, I was even more struck by Nyman’s score for it. I was luckily able to track down a vinyl of it on Ebay, and it’s the record I put on most often. Greenaway’s films are so morbid in their narratives, but the dignified style and utterly lovely music make them linger in my mind as strangely optimistic experiences. I can’t exactly recommend the films themselves as they are certainly not to everyone’s taste, but Michael Nyman’s music is something I think everyone can find beauty in.