Classical Music: The Final Frontier

Over the years I’ve gone through enthusiastic phases of interest for virtually all types of music including blues, jazz, new age, down tempo and even country.  At a given time, my CD collection would grow disproportionately in that given genre as the discovery of one artist led to another, the cadence of the music or my mood attracting musically similar creations.

However, despite finding classical music extremely rich, it has also largely remained inaccessible to me.  Able to recognize a short list of the major composers and able to pronounce the names of an even shorter list with any confidence and certainty, I’ve enjoyed the spaciousness of classical music without developing much familiarity.

Rather than pondering the reasons why – lack of vocals, lack of the pull of a persona of a living composer, the natural subordination of artist below or in support of the music, the lack of marketing, the need for a sophisticated understanding of music, catchy piece names like Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33: I. Alegro Non Troppo and Sonata For Cello & Piano No. 2 In G Minor, Op. 117: II. Andante – whatever the reason – I’d like to briefly plug baroque music on a snowy day.

I’ve oft noted that snow suspends reality as the snow seems to absorb sound and quiet even a busy city scene.  The snow, the crisp winter air transporting me even if only briefly to another place or perhaps more precisely connecting me to the current time and place more directly.  During an unexpected snow storm in which I shoveled the driveway three times in one day, I chose to bring Pandora with me on my Blackberry earbuds, selecting their canned Chamber, Baroque Period station.

Pandora originally stayed away from classical music as the genome project didn’t lend itself to grouping classical music into musically similar stations.  It appears that Pandora has chosen to handle classical music within period sub stations under the genre umbrella of Classical.  I’m not yet certain that the sorting is strictly following the substation channel categories, but it’s a start, a potential access point for me.

If you find yourself wanting to explore classical music, Pandora’s canned genre stations may be a good place to start.  I know for one snowy day, the final frontier was brought nearer as exquisite wintery music filled my ears as my back got sore performing the most mundane of tasks, briefly finding magic in the mundane.

Check out this genre station on Pandora at: http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh120666393262603901

Remember Pandora also has genre stations for many categories of rock, folk, children’s, dance, etc., etc.  And Pandora is available for your mobile devices and "soon" in your car.

Happy listening!

~ Album of the Week ~ December 21, 2009 ~ Ash Wednesday by Elvis Perkins

Happy Winter Solstice! When the night is longest, when the day shortest, I always tend to like Depeche Mode more than ever, though a number of other folk inspired, singer songwriters are dominating my earphones this 'bleak midwinter.'

This week's album of the week comes from a Luck of the Draw pick from the library cd stacks and is Ash Wednesday by Elvis Perkins. This is one of those album covers that caught my eye and demanded a listen, not for its flashyness, but something that seemed to say the tasty tunes inside.

This artist is brand new to me and I'm finding myself hitting repeat to hear the music and lyrics on each song on the album. I strongly suggest you check this chap out. It is always interesting to see what other artists people buying this album bought. While musically not identical, you could put these other bands on your playlist and be quite happy - Andrew Bird, the Decemberists, Iron & Wine and Mason Jennings.

Here is more on Elvis Perkins from CDNow:

While Elvis Perkins' folk music has earned comparisons to the likes of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, he is also known as the son of actor Anthony Perkins and photographer Berry Berenson. Raised in Los Angeles and New York, he started playing guitar in high school and took lessons from Prescott Niles of the Knack. Perkins played in rock bands and learned classical guitar, but his forte became folk, and the unexpected deaths of his parents (his father died of AIDS in 1992, and his mother perished in the 9/11 attacks nine years later) lent a weary, melancholic tone to his first album. Ash Wednesday was released in early 2007 via XL Recordings. To tour behind the album, Perkins assembled a full band and billed his shows as "Elvis Perkins in Dearland," with bassist Brigham Brough, keyboardist/guitarist Wyndham Boylan-Garnett, and drummer Nicholas Kinsey rounding out the lineup. An album of the same name was released in 2009, and the Doomsday EP appeared before the year was up. ~ Kenyon Hopkin, All Music Guide

Content provided by All Music Guide Copyright © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC

12/14/09 Album of the Week ~ Paolo Nutini ~ Sunny Side Up

This week's selection for the album of the week was likely headed to special mention in the new Luck of the Draw, a new Cornucopia Music bin for albums selected at random, based upon the cover, title, etc. from the racks.

The colorful cover got my eye and I vaguely recognized the artist's name. When I put the CD in the computer I was quickly delighted, and amazed as I couldn't quite place the artist in a genre. Surely a singer songwriter, but one moment sounding Bob Marleyesque, at another moment folky, almost Donovanesque, then R&B, then suddenly zaidico! Usually, such genre jumping around comes off as too cute or schizophrenic, but with each twist and turn I was happy.

Turns out that Paolo Nutini is 4th generation Scottish with Italian heritage from his father's side (thus the MacNutini surname was not a recognizable clan surname!). A quick search online tells the story of an up and coming young artist who got his big break when he won a trivia question and got to fill in on stage while the headliner was delayed. Paolo has been climbing the UK and Irish charts since appearance on t.v. across the pond and recently appeared on Jay Leno.

I'll save full review of Paolo later, for now go Nutini - check it out!

Album of the Week - December 7, 2009

Preliminaries - Iggy Pop

As the Cornublog evolves, we'll be experimenting with new ways to highlight music and the artists behind the music. As much as time allows, the Cornu staff will be selecting Albums of the Week and then selecting an artist of the month at the conclusion of the month. This will allow our truly subjective and opaque selection process to consider the vague and stringent qualifications for selection as Artist of the Month in more detail than the past knee jerk selection process.

The album of the week for December 7, 2009 is Iggy Pop's Preliminaries. Iggy Pop has an impressive career playing with many of rock musics greats, and is considered by many to be the "Godfather of Punk" though he has had limited commercial success with his only top 40 hit coming with the duet Candy sung with Kate Pierson of the B-52's. Iggy Pop coauthored songs with David Bowie and even went through rehab with him in Germany.

I've always admired Iggy Pop, and seen him as an influential character on modern music, but I have not gone much beyond his 1990 Brick by Brick album. When I saw the album Preliminaries in the hot bin at the library, I picked it up and gave it a listen. I've been playing it over and over. Surprisingly, the album starts with Iggy singing in French in Les Feuilles Mortes and the album flows as a reported score for Michel Houellebecoq's novel The Possibility of An Island. This album draws me in a way Lou Reed's Magic and Loss did, both delighting me and haunting me. I like it so much I'm going to check out the novel and keep Preliminaries on repeat for the week!

Featured Artist: Bill Callahan

General Impression (from Cornu Conan Malone)

Bill Callahan is a poet, whose voice draws you in and words will resonate with the post existential agnostic in you. Bill is unknowingly lending one of his songs as the theme song for my Absolute Agnostic blog (absoluteagnostic.blogspot.com).

For a void without a question is just perverse
This is the end of faith, no more must I strive
To find my peace, to find my peace in a lie
This is the end of faith, no more must I strive
To find my peace, to find my peace in a lie

It's time to put God away
(I put God away)

Bill also quotes "Eid Ma Clack Shaw" and other crazy words of wisdom from his own subconscious dreaming self and is largely the musician I would be if a woodchuck could chuck wood (within the folk/singer song writer genre anyway.)

Check him out!

Career overview (from yes, Wikipedia)

Callahan started out as a highly experimental artist, using substandard instruments and recording equipment. His early songs often nearly lacked melodic structure and were clumsily played on poorly tuned guitars (possibly influenced by Jandek, whom Callahan admired), resulting in the dissonant sounds on his self-released cassettes and debut album Sewn to the Sky. Much of his early output was instrumental, a stark contrast to the lyrical focus of his later work. Apparently, he used lo-fi techniques not primarily because of an aesthetic preference but because he didn't have any other possibility to make music. Once he signed a contract with Drag City, he also started to use recording studios and a greater variety of instruments for his records.

From 1993 to 2000, Callahan's recordings grew more and more "professional" sounding, with more instruments, and a higher sound quality. In this period he recorded two albums with the influential producer Jim O'Rourke and Tortoise's John McEntire, and collaborated with Neil Hagerty. Callahan also worked closely with his then-girlfriend Cynthia Dall in his early career, and they contributed vocals to each other's albums. After 2000's Dongs of Sevotion, Callahan began moving back to a slightly simpler instrumentation and recording style, while retaining the more consistent songwriting style he had developed over the years. This shift is apparent in albums such as Rain on Lens, Supper, and A River Ain't Too Much to Love.

Smog's songs are often based on simple, repetitive structures, consisting of a simple chord progression repeated for the duration of the entire song. His singing is strikingly characterized by his baritone voice and a style of delivery without being over-emotional. Melodically and lyrically he tends to eschew the verse-chorus approach favoured by many contemporary songwriters, preferring instead a more free-form approach relying less on melodic and lyrical repetition. Themes in Callahan's lyrics include relationships, moving, horses, teenagers, bodies of water, and more recently, politics. His generally dispassionate delivery of lyrics and dark irony often obfuscate complex emotional and lyrical twists and turns. Critics have generally characterized his music as depressing and intensely introverted, with one critic describing it as "a peep-show view into an insular world of alienation." [1] Despite this there is also a broad swathe of joy throughout Callahan's work and more attentive critics have picked up on Callahan's tendency to black humour, a tendency often confused with a depressed mental state or a genuine obsession with the morbid, a confusion no doubt caused by his deadpan vocals.

Cat Power (Chan Marshall) recorded Callahan's song "Bathysphere" on her 1996 album What Would the Community Think and also covered another Callahan song; Red Apples, on her Covers Record, released in 2000.

Smog's "Cold Blooded Old Times" appears on the High Fidelity soundtrack. The song "Vessel in Vain" (from Supper) was also used on the soundtrack of the independent British film Dead Man's Shoes in 2004. In October 2007, Cadillac released a commercial which featured Smog's song "Held" and Bob Dylan driving a 2008 Escalade through the desert.

In 2007, Callahan released Woke on a Whaleheart, his first solo album released under his own name. Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle followed in April, 2009. Both recordings were licenced through Drag City, worldwide. In 2009, Callahan contributed cover songs to three separate tribute albums to Judee Sill, Kath Bloom, and Merge Records.

He currently lives in Austin, Texas.

Do Judge a Book by its Cover

Unlike books, you should judge an album by its cover. Does the cover promote the artist as a product, and if so are you buying? Is there depth, is there a story, is there some quirk, sense of history, is there some visual hook that finds some thread of interest within you, resonance with the soundtrack of your daydreams, workouts, jogs, car drives - resonance with the soundtrack of your life.

If so, pick it up give it a listen, chances are you'll know within 20 seconds if you've got a fit. If necessary, go to track 2, but if an artist doesn't resonate with me by track 1 or 2 they go back to the bin. The judge the album by its cover method will let you down occasionally, but likely the essence of the music within is conveyed even in a font, a color scheme, photo or title.

Whether at your local library or perusing online, judge an album by a cover, pick it up or click on it and give it a listen. Have fun with randomly discovering music new to you.

And of course, if you are not a Pandora Internet radio listener yet, you have to sign up at Pandora.com. It's free (40 hours per month) and you can design your own stations by entering an artist or song or selecting prefabricated genre stations. The station will randomly select other music with similar musical tonalities and thus introduce you to music you are likely to like, but that you wouldn't hear on your local Clear Channel radio station or otherwise discover.

Happy listening!