Tag: David Lang

Playlists

A Playlist for Holy Week 2.0

by Kevin McBrien3 Comments on A Playlist for Holy Week 2.0
A Playlist for Holy Week 2.0

What a difference a year makes! This time last spring, the existential dread was starting to sink in as we hunkered down for the initial surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, several vaccines are being administered by the hundreds of thousands each day, businesses and schools are beginning to reopen, and there’s a general tone of optimism in the air. Of course, we still have a long way to go to reach normalcy (the multiple COVID variants are slightly worrisome…), but for the time being, hope is on the horizon.

Speaking of hope, another Holy Week is upon us. In April 2020, I created a Holy Week playlist on Spotify (which you can check out here) and enjoyed the process so much that I decided to make an entirely different one this year. This time, though, I had some input from my good friend Geoff Nelson, Director of Liturgy and Worship at New City Presbyterian Church. After some discussion, Geoff and I assembled a 3-hour playlist that brims with some amazing sacred music. Like last year’s version, this one presents an aural “journey” through the days of Holy Week and encompasses a spectrum of classical sounds along the way, from Renaissance polyphony to modern Passion settings. (You can view the lineup below; the Spotify playlist itself can be found at the bottom of this post.)

No matter your creed or belief system, we hope that this music will provide you with peace, hope, and encouragement for this time of year, as we look forward to brighter days in the future.

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Essays

30 Days with Bach

by Kevin McBrienLeave a Comment on 30 Days with Bach

On September 28, I embarked on a somewhat odd task: to listen to a single classical piece every day for 30 days. Why you ask? It’s difficult to say. Perhaps it was out of a desire to really, intimately get to know a piece of music. Perhaps it was to spice up the doldrums of daily life as we pass the six-month mark of the pandemic. Perhaps it was a bit of both. Whatever the case, the idea was there and I was eager to try it out.

Me listening to Bach each day

Once the task was set, I selected Bach’s Cantata BWV 150 (Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich or, “Lord, I long for you”) to be the “guinea pig” piece and settled on a good recording of it—specifically, the 2017 recording with the choir Vox Luminis and conductor Lionel Meunier. (However, I decided early on that it would be OK if I wanted to venture to other recordings on occasion.) I also decided early on to pair this 30-day challenge with a series of blog posts. After each day’s listen, I would write a short entry that provided a tidbit, historical factoid, thought, reaction, or musing about the piece. Ultimately, each entry would build into a chronicle of my month-long listening journey.

Since I was writing on the blog every day, I decided to keep the entries short—just a few sentences to a short paragraph or two (although there are a few quite a bit longer than that!) It’s also worth pointing out that I was pretty well acquainted with this Cantata before starting the challenge, so a few of the entries contain thoughts that had already come to mind well before this. Nevertheless, it’s the first time these thoughts have been put to paper (or screen, in this case). Additionally, three brief notes:

  1. When referring to English translations of the German text, I alternated between using Pamela Diehl‘s translation on Emmanuel Music and the translation on All of Bach.
  2. Throughout the daily blogs, I often reference specific musical moments in Bach’s Cantata. In most cases, the blog text is accompanied by a hyperlink, cued up to a YouTube recording that begins at the corresponding moment. If you would like to listen to these, click the bolded text throughout. (There are some other hyperlinks throughout as well that link to other things.)
  3. At the bottom of this post, I included a Spotify playlist containing six full recordings of the Cantata, each of which I listened to at some point during the month.

Without further ado, here are my 30 days with Bach…

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Favorite Albums

Favorite Albums of 2018

by Kevin McBrienLeave a Comment on Favorite Albums of 2018
Favorite Albums of 2018

In the blink of an eye, another year has come and gone. And once again, amidst the good and the bad, the uplifting and the cringy, the triumphs and the tragedies, music remained a remarkable constant—a wellspring of every possible human emotion and a beacon of hope for our crazy world.

Below are ten of my favorite albums that were released in 2018, along with a handful of honorable mentions (since it was difficult to choose only ten!). In no particular order, here they are:

Er-Gene Kahng, Ryan Cockerham & Janáček Philharmonic – Florence Price: Violin Concertos (Albany Records)

“Florence Price” is a name that is slowly gaining some well-deserved recognition in the classical music realm. Just this year, prominent articles from The New York Times, The New Yorker, and NPR highlighted this boundary-breaking African American composer, and the first-ever recording of her two violin concertos was released back in February. Price’s music is gorgeous and immediately accessible—hints of Dvořák and Delius appear here and there, yet it still displays a distinct compositional voice. Here’s hoping that this recording will spark continued recognition for Price’s output in the coming years.


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