Ascending Bird
Work is still keeping me ridiculously busy and too burned out to do much of anything other than read fic. Work is so busy in fact, that I had to go in today. On the plus side, I get Friday off! Hopefully! Oh god, I could really use a three-day weekend, so my boss better not take back his take-Friday-off offer.
Much as I would have preferred having a full weekend, at least the work I did have to do today was soothingly boring, and I spent the time listening to NPR podcasts. A couple recs from aforementioned podcasts:
All Songs Considered did a show on globalFEST 2012, which featured some very interesting and amazing music from that ridiculously catch-all genre of "world" music. And because NPR loves me, they also have full concerts up, my favorites of which were the amazingly virtuoso Silk Road Ensemble, and the surprising and fascinating Wang Li.
Silk Road Ensemble's performance of Ascending Bird, an arrangement of a Persian folk tune by Siamak Aghaei and Colin Jacobsen was especially thrilling. It's already an amazing song, it sounds so exactly like a bird in flight, but the live performance NPR recorded sounds like it's careening on the edge of chaos and total abandon. It's just breathtaking, and I'd love to see it live someday.
Wang Li is a little difficult to describe, and I didn't expect to like his music. But I was intrigued by the sample in All Songs Considered, and ended up listening to his whole hour-long concert enthralled. He does astonishing things with just a jaw harp (also called a Jew's harp) and shang (a kind of handbell), and creates music that sounds at once ancient and startlingly like modern electronica. I almost couldn't believe all that variety of sound could come from just one man and one instrument. Bob Boilen said something about how he can't wait for Li to collaborate with a dubstep artist, and I agree. But even as it is, it's fascinating music. Not the kind of thing I could listen to all the time, but it's great for when you're doing something more or less mindless and want some interesting music to focus on.
This entry was originally posted at http://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/396051.html, with
comments there.
Much as I would have preferred having a full weekend, at least the work I did have to do today was soothingly boring, and I spent the time listening to NPR podcasts. A couple recs from aforementioned podcasts:
All Songs Considered did a show on globalFEST 2012, which featured some very interesting and amazing music from that ridiculously catch-all genre of "world" music. And because NPR loves me, they also have full concerts up, my favorites of which were the amazingly virtuoso Silk Road Ensemble, and the surprising and fascinating Wang Li.
Silk Road Ensemble's performance of Ascending Bird, an arrangement of a Persian folk tune by Siamak Aghaei and Colin Jacobsen was especially thrilling. It's already an amazing song, it sounds so exactly like a bird in flight, but the live performance NPR recorded sounds like it's careening on the edge of chaos and total abandon. It's just breathtaking, and I'd love to see it live someday.
Wang Li is a little difficult to describe, and I didn't expect to like his music. But I was intrigued by the sample in All Songs Considered, and ended up listening to his whole hour-long concert enthralled. He does astonishing things with just a jaw harp (also called a Jew's harp) and shang (a kind of handbell), and creates music that sounds at once ancient and startlingly like modern electronica. I almost couldn't believe all that variety of sound could come from just one man and one instrument. Bob Boilen said something about how he can't wait for Li to collaborate with a dubstep artist, and I agree. But even as it is, it's fascinating music. Not the kind of thing I could listen to all the time, but it's great for when you're doing something more or less mindless and want some interesting music to focus on.
This entry was originally posted at http://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/396051.html, with
comments there.