Inspiration ~ Dec22
New music ~ Adam Wilson Hunter ~ Adam’s third full studio album came out in December. As well as his characteristically moving songwriting and signature guitar and vocal performance, Adam’s a master at bringing talented musicians together (virtually or in person) so we’re treated to arrangements with immaculately recorded drums, warm human strings and some beautiful horn textures and solos.
Performance ~ Vulfpeck ~ typically batty but still tight as you like and cool to record standing around 1 mic.
Music geek stuff ~ Fugue structure ~ fugal counterpoint is a structure exposing a melodic idea (the subject) which is then imitated, countered and interwoven in various ways. We used to have to write fugues at uni and most of the time just got knotted up by all the rules. But in the right hands (mainly Bach’s) fugues sound less like a solution to a puzzle and more like the precisely arranged petals of a flower unfurling. Somehow the artistic/emotional power of the entire expression is greater than sum of the mathematically proportioned parts. Listen to Daniel Barenboim playing the C shape minor - you’ll at least raise your eyebrows at the end and you might cry. The link and picture below points to a good video colour coding all the bits of the structure as the music plays - satisfying.
This month’s playlist:
