music

Bon Iver announced a new album to be released later this year. I thought I’d take some time to reflect on what it was like to hear his first album, For Emma, Forever Ago, when I was twenty. The Cultural Experience I think most generations have some major cultural experience that it is hard to … Read more

Björk has been quite a polarizing figure throughout the years. I used to absolutely love her music in the early 2000s. My History with Björk’s Music I thought Vespertine was a brilliant culmination in all the ideas she had been exploring. It was an album with palpable emotional output. It pushed the boundaries of accompaniment … Read more

Today’s composer to know is Julia Wolfe. Recently Julia Wolfe’s piece Anthracite Fields won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize. I had been planning on including Wolfe in this series anyway because she is a founder of one of the most important contemporary music collectives: Bang on a Can. If you don’t know about this, it came … Read more

This article digs into the true meaning of Sia’s Chandelier lyrics. It’s not just a party song. It has the depth and sadness of her past material. Find out more.

The composer for today is Jennifer Higdon. My relationship to today’s composer is much different than the previous two. The previous ones I have been listening to and following for ten years or more. I found this one recently because I was listening to Sirius XM’s classical channel and heard something magnificent come on. I … Read more

This week’s composer to know is Aaron Jay Kernis. Recall that I’m trying to expose people to important living and working composers they may never have heard of. I’m not so sure about today’s choice, because in my circles he is a name people know. Aaron Jay Kernis Aaron Jay Kernis is someone you must … Read more

I figured I would start a series on important living composers that most people are probably unaware of. I think a lot of symphony orchestras do a disservice by sticking to the classics. Composers to Know Even people that regularly attend orchestra performances have a hard time naming more than a handful of living composers … Read more

Egon Wellesz is one of those composers you should know if you’re into music. There is a serious lack of knowledge about great modern composers, even among regular symphony-goers. Egon Wellesz Bio Recap Egon Wellesz was an early twentieth-century composer whose music seems to have been totally forgotten. He was also a musicologist, and I … Read more

The purpose of this review is to explain some of the subtleties that make Matt Nathanson’s Modern Love much more than a standard pop album to be forgotten.

Joanna Newsom’s Ys is a polarizing album. But it’s the quintessential example of art done right. Read on for my analysis and philosophy of art.