Life and death meet in a cusp. The two are intrinsically linked. My second daughter was born on the cusp. Alela Diane Strongly influenced by British singer songwriters like Vashti Bunyan or Sandy Denny and associated with contemporary acts like Fleet Foxes or Mariee Sioux, Oregon-based singer songwriter Alela Diane’s indie-folk and eerie songs first […]
songwriting
Trio Da Kali and Kronos Quartet: Ladilikan
Opening the record, Trio Da Kali’s balafon (a wooden xylophone), bass ngoni (a traditional lute) and vocals clearly transport the listener to West Africa. But the introduction of Kronos Quartet’s classical strings a minute into “Tita” triggers an unexpected yet uplifting musical shift, thus unveiling an extraordinary fusion record. Commissioned by the Aga Khan Music […]
Planetarium
We’ve returned to the question of identity and humanity and human rights, and what does it mean to be a person in our world? What is our relationship to our world, and the environment? What does it mean to believe in a divine being, and what does that divine being require of us? That divine […]
Rhiannon Giddens: Freedom Highway
Know thy history. Let it horrify you; let it inspire you. Let it show you how the future can look, for nothing in this world has not come around before. Originally from North Carolina, banjo, fiddle player and singer Rhiannon Giddens is also a music historian at heart. Through her work with Carolina Chocolate Drops, […]
Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Navigator
I feel like my generation, through groups like Black Lives Matter, is really focusing on that type of intersectionality—if one of us is not free, then none of us are free. The Navigator’s role is to tell the story, tell it to the people who don’t know their own story, so they can be free. […]
Trio Mediæval & Arve Henriksen: Rímur
Based and formed in Oslo in 1997, Trio Mediæval is a Norwegian/Swedish vocal ensemble whose repertoire features a wide range of medieval music from France, England or Italy, traditional Folk songs and ballads from the Nordic countries as well as contemporary music written for the trio by Gavin Bryars, the New-York-based collective Bang on a […]
