Inspiration ~ Apr22
New music ~ Leif Vollebeck ~ I have what I think is a man-crush on Leif Vollebeck. He has a brilliantly emotive voice and makes quite complex textures and techniques sound effortlessly simple and natural. His timeless track Elergy is in the playlist this month but he also has a new EP out of recent live recordings from the last few years called New Waves. I highly recommend it.
Leif Vollebeck’s new EP New Waves came out this month
Performance ~ Voces8 ~ I came across this performance of a relatively obscure 18th century setting of “Lay a Garland” by Robert Pearsall. Not a well-known composer but he did a lot to revive and expand on the madrigal form which was the typical vessel for the ‘smash hits’ of the Italian renaissance a few centuries prior. Carlo Gesualdo was good at madrigals which I only remember because apparently after finding his wife and her lover in flagrante and stabbing them to death, incontrovertible evidence was ignored because the court liked his music so much and decided he was innocent. Or so I was taught as a 15 year old….
Anyway this is beautifully sung by Voces8 one voice to a part (and isn’t bloody or unjust in any way).
Voces8
Music geek stuff ~ Expensive Chords ~ last month’s bit in this section was about the importance of practise so it’s a bit naughty to immediately follow it with a sort of ‘short-cut’. There are no short cuts. But… there are some tricks to sounding spicy without having Jacob Collier levels of music theory. I love Dan Bingham’s playing and I love what Jack Duxbury does on Youtube. The two of them here take a second before a James Arthur gig they play on to show you how to substitute chord III in any key for a sort of 1 over 3 with an added sharp 7. It sounds great and once you get the hang of it you can chuck it in all over the place.
Expensive chords with Jack and Dan
This month’s playlist:
