A 2012 List

In keeping with family (who else would care?) tradition, I am working up a list of my favorite artists/albums of 2012.  Of course, I haven't heard it all and could never claim any of this to be the "best".  Here is the list so far, in order of when they came to mind (for whatever that implies):


Me'Shell N'Degeocello: Pour Une Ame Souveraine - A Dedication to Nina Simone
Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas
Chrysta Bell: This Train (see note*)
Cecelia Bartoli: Mission
Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel
From The Mouth of The Sun: Woven Tide
Muddy Waters and The Rolling Stones: Live at the Checkerboard Lounge (1981)
Emilia Amper: Trollfageln (The Magic Bird)
Anne Akiko Meyers:  Air - The Bach Album
Kimiko Ishizaka: Bach - Goldberg Variations (Open Goldberg Project)
Cold Specks: I Predict a Graceful Expulsion
Esperanza Spalding: Radio Music Society
Calexico: Algiers
Neneh Cherry: The Cherry Thing
Brooklyn Rider: Seven Steps

More close contenders ...

Mumford and Sons: Babel
Neil Young: Psychedelic Pill
Regina Spektor: What We Saw From The Cheap Seats
Rachael Yamagata: Heavyweight (EP)
Cat Power: Sun
Beirut: Rip Tide
Bob Dylan: Tempest
Loudon Wainwright III: Older Than My Old Man Now
Laura Gibson: La Grande
Jack White: Blunderbuss
Melody Gardot: The Absence
The Shins: Port of Morrow
David Byrne & St. Vincent: Love This Giant
Daniel Barenboim/West-Eastern Divan Orchestra: Beethoven for All - Symphonies 1-9


* I am told that this album actually released in 2011, but I couldn't get it until 2012, so it gets counted in.

SQ varied among my picks, particularly with respect to the plague of compressed dynamic range, but the music/performance of any victims/miscreants above kept me listening in spite of that disappointment.

Perhaps I will try to talk about some of these individual albums as time allows.

Oh, yes.  There were a number of other albums that came highly recommended by friends and acquaintances  and are worth a listen, but they just didn't stick for some reason or another, such as:

Frank Ocean: channel ORANGE
Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Alelujah!  Don't Bend! Ascend!
Gary Clark, Jr: Blak and Blu
Grizzly Bear: Shields
Beach House: Bloom
Swans: The Seer
and more ...

My biggest list is the one of stuff still to be heard.  Not to mention what will happen as I continue to listen to my 2012 list into 2013 and beyond.

Ravi Shankar, R.I.P.

Like many of us, my introduction to Indian music in the 1960s was via Ravi Shankar, and I have loved this stuff ever since. He died yesterday, but left us two wonderful daughters whose work are also staples in my collection: Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones. 

Just one sample story here.

Farewell, Dave Brubeck

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck has died at age 91.  More details here.

I started accumulating a jazz collection when I was in high school, and one of the first albums I rushed out to buy when it was first released in 1959 was Brubeck's Time Out, featuring the immortal Take Five.  Already this great tribute has appeared today on YouTube:

Gangnam Style

Continuing with the K-pop theme, here's South Korean rapper Psy commenting on Gangnam Style:

 

K-pop and Girls Generation

Friend Richard C. draws my attention to this fascinating piece in The New Yorker, describing the Korean pop music phenomenon.

Anne Akiko Meyers

A new album has been added to the collection: Air - The Bach Album by Anne Akiko Meyers. Unique to this album is Meyers' rendering of the D Minor Double Concerto in which she plays BOTH parts, using both (yes, she owns two of the things) of her Stradivariuses, one from 1697 and the other from 1730. Purportedly, the former was once owned by Napoleon and the latter by the King of Spain. I have several examples of the Bach violin concerti in my musical archives (my favorite up to now being the 1980s Academy of Ancient Music version, with the Double Concerto played by Jaap Schroder and Christopher Hirons), but this is my go-to recording now. I also downloaded from HDTracks a high-resolution 24-bit/96mHz edition -- you can get conventional 16-bit versions from Amazon and other sources -- and the sound quality is stunning.

For more of Meyers, visit her site and her blog. Now check out this pre-release performance of the Bach title piece on the album:



Also, you can read/hear NPR's interview of Meyers here, which has a video clip of her appearance on Johnny Carson's TV show at age eleven.

Finally, I will also share with you a violinist.com interview of a few years ago, where I first came upon this terrific artist, when I was actually trying to track another of my violin favorites, Hilary Hahn. And here is that site's latest on Meyers and her new album. Whew!

UPDATE: I see that tonight Billboard's Classical Chart shows the Meyers album at #2.

La Grande

Just picked up Laura Gibson’s new album, La Grande, and heard it last night. You might be interested in the backstory — yes, it does have to do with the very La Grande some of us know well — and watch this music video:

More here and here.

Etta James, R.I.P

Legendary blues singer Etta James has passed on. Read more

Etta is probably particularly remembered for her "At Last":

(will try to find a better video on this piece)

One of my personal favorites was her "I'd Rather Go Blind":

Stop SOPA/PIPA

In solidarity with Google, Wikipedia, Fark and many others, today I offer at least these links: http://www.stopthewall.us/?gclid=CP_9xvub2q0CFYUZQgod3xGInw

http://www.savetheinternet.com/pipa-whiplist