WILT_2020-09

A playlist of songs that intrigued me from Sunday to Saturday. Week of 22 Nov 2020 to 28 Nov 2020.

1. Waiting for You (Live at Alexandra Palace, 2020) – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
2. Mélodies (Transcription pour piano de Liszt, S.561/8: Der Leiermann) – Frank Schubert, performed by Lazar Berman
3. Il bell’Antonio, Tema III – Giovanni Sollima, performed by Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott

Hyperlink to Spotify playlist: WILT_2020-09

Notes

This week features an extremely short playlist because I did not have much time to either listen to music, or mind it enough attention. However, what stood out was the resonance happening in some of these songs. And I mean it as a physical resonance.

I encountered most of the music listed here at the end of a work day or work cycle, with a head full of pressure from various work demands. Through some respite, Nick Cave’s magnetic voice permeates my body, alleviating and opening previously blocked mental passages. It is a brief but welcomed respite.

The reverberations of piano keys hitting strings is also another healing tone. I can’t fully explain it, maybe there isn’t a science to it, but one of the new perspectives opening up to me right now is that the music I’ve been listening to recently is simplified to a very base or empirical desire of _expression_. Simplistically, musical expression has been “pure” in this journey. An artist or musician directly interfacing with a physical instrument. Tones, melodies, pitch, dynamics, vibrato, tensions, release, volume, etc… they’re all directly controlled, or expressed by the performer. No lyrics to tell a story, no intermediaries to colour or facilitate. Just a direct relationship and expression. It is a beauty we are afforded through the wonders of recording technology.

Perhaps the next step, is to encounter directly music performed just for you. Maybe that is the next closest you can get to being the musician yourself, and letting the muse possess you, and you simply become a vehicle for what the universe is wanting to perform through you.