Category: music composition

Videogame music has always flirted with the alternative music industry. From the nostalgic 90s-era Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, which introduced artists such as Papa Roach and Rage Against the Machine to those of us who still didn’t have a functional internet connection at home, through to the 00s and the rise in popularity of Guitar Hero, it’s been an upward climb for the more extreme genres in music making an appearance in gaming.

These days, alternative genres are beginning to dominate videogame music as developers experiment with sound design and composition more than ever. A deeply intense, heavy soundtrack can add atmosphere and immersion to a game that would feel empty without it.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2

Take experimental folk outfit Heilung, who are working on the soundtrack for Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. The Scandinavian trio base their own music on texts and runic inscriptions from the Bronze and Iron Ages as well as, lesser so, the Viking Age. The name of the band itself translates to “healing” in German, and with the narrative themes of the Hellblade series falling around Senua’s journey to heal from trauma and loss, the band already seems a perfect fit – and that’s before you even dive into their involvement.

“They approached us with an idea that rang very true within ourselves and the way that we work, because they’re working with healing but on a different platform,” Maria Franz, who joined Heilung shortly after its formation, says with a smile. “We were really aware that we had so much in common and really connected. I remember being fascinated by that.”

Heilung as a collective met in the early 2000s from a “living history scene” where they would reenact historic events. “It started with Kai [Uwe Faust] wanting to record some poems in my studio at the exchange of tattooing,” Christopher Juul explains. “It became a collaboration on art and music.” Heilung is not only a music project, he tells us, but a multimedia project with visuals, animation, and books with no limit. “That only felt natural to us to start collaborating outside what we normally do such as movies and videogames.”

Their collaboration with Hellblade series developers Ninja Theory came after a video of one of their live rituals went viral. “Tamim [Antoniades, co-founder] and David [Garcia Diaz, audio director] stumbled upon that video on YouTube and were like, ‘Oh my God, this is who we need to work with on the next game,’ and they reached out,” Franz says.

The trio then went on to travel to the Ninja Theory studio in Copenhagen where they showcased their working methods. “We took some artifacts we had in the studio and started playing around with it. Kai sang some, I sang some, Chris played some and spent an hour mixing it together and doing magic to it. David and Tamim were just sitting there,” she says mouth agape, chuckling. “We also became really good friends. They’re really nice people.”

Collaboration is at the heart of everything Heilung does and they hope that players will be able to hear that in-game. “When we create our own albums we go out into nature and record actual sounds,” Juul explains, “and this is very much how Ninja Theory works with this game to make it as immersive and natural as possible.”

That immersion takes different forms, but Juul goes on to explain that this shared vision for collaboration and nature led to the band recording sounds in Iceland, and more specifically a lava cave. This led to the creation of a soundscape that just wouldn’t be possible for a regular vinyl.

“The idea of being able to move your head inside the music, you know, like literally when you are moving your head inside the game you can change the perception of the sound and where different elements of the music are placed relative to you is something you cannot really do with a stereo,” he says. “That has been a really interesting path because that truly captures the essence of being in, for instance, a lava cave, because you are there. When you put on your headphones we are actually there in that location for real, singing, and you will hear it as if we are there.”

The passion and love Heilung has for Hellblade 2 and the Ninja Theory team is evident from the way its members talk about the process, the people, and the environments before even having seen any imagery from the game. As the creative process is still ongoing, and the band are obviously under non-disclosure agreements prior to its release, they’re limited as to the extent of the information they can reveal and discuss. “If you could look in our heads now you would be, ‘Oh!’,” Faust says with an open-mouthed, amazed expression. But that doesn’t stop Heilung from teasing us. “I can say something,” Juul says. “We are going to be playing the game much more than you think.”

“An easter egg for another time,” Franz adds.

The technicality and depth of Heilung’s involvement with Ninja Theory and Hellblade 2 runs much deeper than just music. Along this “fantastic journey” the band have been on, they’ve had the chance to bounce ideas back and forth with the game’s developers in a “ping-pong” process. It’s something they consider to be a gift and believe the end result will be something amazing.

Destiny and Halo 2

However, Heilung’s journey differs strongly from Misha Mansoor’s involvement with the Destiny series. Mansoor, a member of progressive metal outfit Periphery, states from the very beginning of our chat that he could “never” be a videogame music composer, despite having his work not only in Destiny 2, but on the Halo 2 Anniversary soundtrack too.

“I’ve put a lot of hours into Destiny,” he laughs. “There was a strike that had a song that I just loved. I thought it was a really well-composed song. These strikes have these boss battles and it’s the culmination of a long mission and you always hear the song. I just thought it was epic and fitting,” he says, before mentioning that he thought it would “make a good metal song.”

He took on the project with zero expectations: “I just did a cover of it for fun, but to the exact same tempo. I was using it as a reference track because I wanted to get all of the layers and all the little details.”

When his version of the Sepik’s Prime theme was posted online, Mansoor said people liked it. “As it turns out, they [Bungie] were working on an expansion,” he says, which was the Rise of Iron DLC for Destiny 1.

“I guess the developers just found it, and were using it as a placeholder for this one part of a raid that they were working on and they actually asked me if they could license it.” Mansoor laughs, “Yeah, I didn’t realise that’s how that worked.” In the end, the music wasn’t used for the raid in the original Destiny, but the original strike was revamped and reprised for Destiny 2, which now features Mansoor’s version of the track.

“It’s funny how that worked out. I’ve been involved with a couple of Bungie-related things by accident,” he says. “In this case it was just that I was a fan.” Mansoor is referring to the Halo 2 Anniversary soundtrack, which came about due to pre-existing relationships with Finishing Move, a production company working on music composition and sound design for TV and videogames, which Mansoor tells us does a lot of work with 343 Industries and Microsoft.

“They just did music for The Callisto Protocol and they did Flight Simulator and they do these big games,” he explains. “This [Halo 2 Anniversary Edition] was, I think, one of the biggest games they were doing at the time. Funnily enough I have never played Halo, but they were explaining that in the original game they licensed an Incubus song and a Breaking Benjamin song and they just didn’t want to have to pay to relicense those,” he laughs, “But they wanted these high energy rock and metal songs.”

As Mansoor explains, the rock and metal genres are tricky to work with and easy to get wrong unless you “live and breathe” them. When Finishing Move realised the limits of its capabilities, it approached Mansoor for help – something he was never really credited for.

“It’s interesting, I never got properly credited for it which I probably should be more mad about, but I kind of don’t care,” laughs Mansoor, referring to the final tracks that are on the soundtrack – Breaking the Covenant and Follow in Flight. “Luckily in the YouTube comments, people seem to know that it’s me.”

Despite his positive experiences, Mansoor is adamant he’d never want to pursue writing rock and metal for videogames further. “I think I would rather just be fed these little morsels and get to experience it for what it is. Seeing what Mick Gordon went through, I don’t know exactly what happened there and I’m sure there’s two sides to every story, but there’s one side there that’s got a goddamn table of contents. You know what I’m saying?”

Mansoor is referring to the well-publicised argument over working conditions and pay that has been taking place between Doom series composer Mick Gordon and developing studio Id Software.

“Knowing Mick, I’m a bit more inclined to believe him, and knowing what this industry is like – it kind of tracks,” he adds. “I don’t necessarily want to interact too much with that side. I like that I get to flirt with it a little bit and enjoy the fun stuff and not have to deal with the dark side of being a videogame compose.”

In terms of games he’d love to contribute to, the Final Fantasy series tops the list due to the immersive feeling and emotive response it triggers in him. “I think a lot of people might be quick to write videogame music off but I think the pieces of music that have affected me most in my life might be videogame music, which says a lot,” he explains. “You spend so much time in this world, in this game, and you form these emotional attachments to the story.”

Sonic Frontiers

There are, of course, instances where video game music contributors actually don’t have a hand in the composition of the track at all, as is the case for Merry Kirk-Holmes of To Octavia who was approached to feature on the Sonic Frontiers soundtrack seemingly out of nowhere. “Our drummer was a big fan of the series, but I was not too familiar with it or the soundtrack,” he says. Kirk-Holmes’ vocals feature on the main theme for Sonic Frontiers, I’m Here, but he’s still not entirely sure how that happened.

“We got a message from someone with no followers, nothing, and they said they were from Sega and had heard about To Octavia and wanted to get me to sing on a song, and we instantly thought it was a scam but asked them to email our managers,” he laughs. “They did, and it turned out to be completely legit.”

However, Kirk-Holmes’ creative input stopped at writing the lyrics and performing the vocals. It was Japanese-American hard rock band Crush 40’s Jun Senoue who was producing the track, and had a particular interest in emerging artists. Through this interest, Senoue heard Kirk-Holmes’ band and reached out.

“[Tomoya Ohtani] arranged the track and I tried to stick as much as possible to his guide melody,” Kirk-Holmes says, “They were okay with the first thing I put down,” he continues, noting that the process was “painless” and the only changes being requested were down to his Australian accent. Kirk-Holmes himself is an RPG fan, and loves the direction Sonic Frontiers has taken, but if you were to ask him what he would love to lend his vocals to next, it’d be a WWE game.

It’s clear then that there’s huge variation in the industry, down to how much creative input an artist has when working on videogame music, especially when that isn’t their main involvement in music and they all have primary projects. The roads in are varied and often unexpected, and it seems that artists are scouted for game music rather than actively seeking out these opportunities and putting themselves forward for them.

The rewards are different, the possibilities are endless, but there’s a definite shift in metal and alternative artists being asked to collaborate with game developers, as opposed to having their already released music imported into games. There’s much more creative freedom afforded to external contributing artists than ever before, and that in itself is incredibly exciting.

“All the Names of God at Once,” the hypnotizing debut solo album from Little Rock astral soul singer-songwriter Joshua Asante, isn’t out until late January, but there is a chance for you to get an early listen. Asante will perform the record during a show Friday at White Water Tavern in Little Rock.

Blcvck Spvde of St. Louis and Little Rock electronic musician Yuni Wa will open.

Asante, frontman for Amasa Hines and Velvet Kente, began work on the record in late 2019 with the idea of rolling it out in 2020. Care to guess what happened next?

“I had in my mind that I’d get these songs together. I’d started touring solo, and I thought that at the top of 2020 I’d go out and play these songs,” Asante says with a chuckle.

Of course, the pandemic prevented any touring or shows for a while. “There are probably half a billion stories like that from pre-covid life, of musicians and artists who thought they were going to do something,” Asante muses.

Something positive came from the delay, however. The record, which comes out Jan. 28 on Asante’s Quiet Contender label, was initially planned as a quickly recorded project. With more time on his hands, Asante began to tinker with the album, with help from Zachariah Reeves who played bass and keyboards and contributed to the production.

[RELATED: Live Music in Arkansas for New Year’s Weekend]

“We recorded at the chapel behind Fellowship Hall Sound,” he says. “As the virus proliferated, we ended up sort of mixing and overdubbing on it for the next year and a half. So it sounds like an expensive record, but the primary capital investment was time … . Having that time changed the shape of the record. It made it an album.”

The result is a dreamy, atmospheric album that calls to mind TV on the Radio, Radiohead and Alabama Shakes. There are forays into jazz, electronica, rock, soul and ’80s synth pop, all highlighted by Asante’s passionate and intense vocals.

“Seen It, Say It,” an album highlight that Asante calls his best composition, features saxophonist Stuart Bogie, a member of New York-based afro-beat group Antibalas who also played on TV on the Radio’s “Return to Cookie Mountain” and has recorded or performed with the Hold Steady, Run the Jewels, Arcade Fire, Amy Helm, Adia Victoria, Taylor Swift and more.

    Joshua Asante (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Joshua Asante)  “I sent him the song to put some clarinet on and he made such a lush orchestration, I have to credit him for a greater contribution because of how diligent he was with this one song,” Asante says.

There’s also an undeniable spiritual element to the record, whose title was inspired by the Saul Williams song “All John Coltrane’s Solos at Once.”

“I was like, if you’re trying to create a mental framework around all of his solos at once, you’re trying to hear all of the names of God at once,” Asante says. “The way [Coltrane] worked, he was trying to pronounce all he understood about creation, the creator, the creators and divinity. I scribbled those thoughts down, and they stayed with me as a common thread from a philosophical standpoint.”

Lyrically, Asante is influenced by things like “Blade Runner,”http://www.bing.com/news/”Dune,” Black speculative fiction and the sci-fi novels of Octavia Butler. “Everybody Gets Used,” the album opener, reflects these touchstones and sets the tone for the record, he says.

“This notion of like, you’re in a car and it’s a scene in ‘Blade Runner’ but there are actually Black people there. Or you’re on Arrakis [from ‘Dune’] and there are Black people among the Fremen. I wanted the rest of the record to pan out from there.”

Joining Asante onstage for the Friday album show will be Reeves, Seratones drummer Jesse Gabriel and bassist Corey Harris.

It’s become fairly common for musicians to perform entire albums in concert, though Asante’s approach of presenting an unreleased work is unique. We were wondering, though, what album would he like to see played live in its entirety?

“Oooooo, damn. I almost said [Radiohead’s] ‘In Rainbows,’ but I’ve watched [the concert video] ‘From the Basement,’ like, 1,000 times. I think I’d go with ‘Black Up,’ by Shabazz Palaces. That would be tight.”

Joshua Asante

• Opening acts: Blcvck Spvde, Yuni Wa
• 8:30 p.m. Friday, White Water Tavern, 2500 W. 7th St., Little Rock
• Admission: $10
• Information: (501) 375-8400 | whitewatertavern.com

As we arrive at the final Saturday column of this musical year, we give thanks for the many musicians and opportunities that we have had this year to share, perform and listen to the euterpic, terpsichoric and polyhymnic offerings of our muses. Pardon me as I remember back and look forward at a few notable people. 

Those of us who have gravitated to musical theatre remember two giants of the theater who have brought down their final curtain. Stephen Sondheim came to the fore over 65 years ago. His first show was in 1954 and his last premiere was in 2008. In between, he gave theatre aficionados hours of thrilling music and storytelling. Most of his catalog is revived and programmed year after year around the country. He is truly a giant in the industry.

In a career of nearly 80 years is Angela Lansbury, actress and chanteuse. She is well known across several generations from her days in “Gaslight” to her turn as Jessica Fletcher to Mrs. Lovett and Mrs. Potts. I first got to know her work in “Bedknobs and Broomsticks.” I remember her in Jerry Herman’s “Mrs. Santa Claus,” a made-for-TV musical movie. She brought Herman’s “Mame” to life on the stage 30 years earlier. My children know her from “Beauty and the Beast” as the charming singer of the Academy Award-winning title song. However you know her work, you saw a consummate professional. 

This was the year that Ned Rorem died. I know Ned Rorem as a composer of song cycles that many of us used in our voice lessons. But he composed symphonies and operas as well. His 20th-century outlook in music was tonal in nature and not given to some of the other classical compositional styles that have been popular in the recent past. He is perhaps best known for evoking the French impressionists in his compositional style. It is said he regarded all music as lyrical, even if no words were associated with it. 

Loretta Lynn and Meat Loaf sang in two very distinct genres, but each influenced new generations of musicians. Ms. Lynn showed us that, despite growing up in one of the poorest parts of this country, one can rise above circumstances and create careers of which to be proud. Meat Loaf showed it’s okay to have fun with your music; at least that’s what I take from his appearance in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” To that, I can relate. 

To look forward, we look no further than King Charles III. If past coronations are any indication, we can expect many newly commissioned compositions to celebrate this change of the reigning monarch. We will see several old favorites trotted out (Zadok the Priest), as well as new coronation music reflective of the British style of composition (consider that “Orb and Sceptre” was composed for his mother’s coronation and “Crown Imperial” for his grandfather’s). What British composer will step forward for this important musical event?

Farewell, 2022. Hello, 2023. Show me what you’ve got! 

Richard Tiegs is a local musician. His periodic contributions reflect his broad interests in music. 

In other respects, 2022 may have been a problematic year. But it was a wonderful stretch of time on the classical music front, full of brilliant performances and provocative new works.

Because I’m a natural-born optimist, I’m going to assume this will continue into the new year. In chronological order, here are 12 events I’m looking forward to in the early months of 2023.

Joyce DiDonato

The eloquent American mezzo-soprano, fresh off her triumphant turn as Virginia Woolf in the world premiere of Kevin Puts’ opera “The Hours” at the Metropolitan Opera, returns to the Bay Area with her new music/theatrical recital “Eden.” Together with the Baroque instrumental ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro, she has assembled music by Ives, Mahler, Handel, Copland and more — as well as a newly commissioned song by the British composer Rachel Portman — to address the climate crisis.

7:30 p.m. Jan. 20. $15-$148. Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University. 650-724-2464. https://live.stanford.edu; 8 p.m. Jan. 21. $36-$86. Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. 510-642-9988. https://calperformances.org

Oakland Symphony

As it continues a multiyear search for a music director to succeed the late Michael Morgan, each of the orchestra’s programs offers a chance to witness not only a guest conductor’s performance style, but their repertoire choices as well. Guest conductor Andrew Grams comes to Oakland with an all-American program featuring music by two African American figures, Florence Price and William Dawson; both of them works based on folk themes. Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody, with piano soloist Sara Davis Buechner, fills out the program.

8 p.m. Jan. 27. $19.60-$90. Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. 510-444-0801. www.oaklandsymphony.org

San Francisco Symphony: ‘Emergency Shelter Intake Form’

Gabriel Kahane is best known as a singer-songwriter, the creator of rich and harmonically inventive music that explores both the interior and the public landscapes. But his music draws equally on the pop and classical lexicon, which makes the prospect of a full orchestral score — to be introduced by the San Francisco Symphony with conductor Edwin Outwater — something to look forward to with enthusiasm. The piece, which takes its title from the world of bureaucracy, is on the subject of homelessness.

Feb. 2-3. $43-$135. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-6000. www.sfsymphony.org

Midori

Every appearance by Japanese violinist Midori is a treat, an extravagant blend of dazzling technical skill and probing interpretive insight lavished on both traditional and out-of-the way repertoire. Her two San Francisco recitals are anchored by Bach’s music for unaccompanied violin, which she’s pair with recent works by Thierry Escaich, Annie Gosfield, Jessie Montgomery and John Zorn.

7:30 p.m. Feb. 2. 2 p.m. Feb. 5. $50-$70. Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-392-2545. www.sfperformances.org

‘Everest: An Immersive Experience’

The video version of composer Joby Talbot’s opera “Everest,” which Opera Parallèle created during the pandemic lockdown, was a marvel of genre hybridization that blended recorded singing, animation and the aesthetic of the graphic novel. Now that audiences can more safely gather in person, director Brian Staufenbiel has repurposed the material as an immersive show, with the video and music resounding all around the audience.

“Everest: An Immersive Experience”: Opera Parallèle. Feb. 3-12. $20-$115. Z Space, 450 Florida St., S.F. https://operaparallele.org. 

John Williams

The venerable conductor and composer — not of film scores exclusively, but of concert music as well — returns to the Bay Area for a one-night visit with the San Francisco Symphony. Anne-Sophie Mutter is slated to serve as soloist in Williams’ Violin Concerto No. 2, on a program that also features music from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter” franchises, “Cinderella Liberty” and more.

7:30 p.m. Feb. 14. Sold out. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-6000. www.sfsymphony.org 

Catalyst Quartet

San Francisco Performances’ annual Pivot Festival is given over to three recitals by this ambitious string quartet, which has devoted itself to championing the overlooked work of Black and female composers. Each of the programs includes a quartet by the 18th century musician Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges; along with that recurrent theme comes a range of music by such composers as Ethel Smyth, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Fanny Mendelssohn and more.

7:30 p.m. Feb. 21-23. $45-$65. Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-392-2545. www.sfperformances.org

‘Solomon’

At the end of 2021, Harry Bicket and the English Concert came to Berkeley for a performance of Handel’s opera “Alcina” that was marked by powerful singing and regrettable technical mishaps. Without the latter, the group’s return — for a single performance of Handel’s Biblical oratorio “Solomon” — promises to be sublime. Mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg takes the title role, with soprano Miah Persson as Solomon’s Queen.

3 p.m. March 5. $42-$125. Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. 510-642-9988. https://calperformances.org

Vienna Philharmonic

The orchestra regarded by some as the world’s finest comes to Berkeley for a three-concert stint, led by the acclaimed German conductor Christian Thielemann. The repertoire choices are narrow (Brahms, Bruckner, Mendelssohn, etc.), but the orchestra’s gloriously burnished sound and its members’ ability to play as one may well prove revelatory.

7:30 p.m. March 7-9. $50-$275. Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. 510-642-9988. https://calperformances.org

California Symphony

Gustav Mahler infamously declared after marrying the vivacious and talented Alma Schindler that there could be only one composer in the family, thus putting a halt to her creative aspirations. But some of her fragrant, expressive early songs do remain, and contralto Sara Couden is slated to sing them with Music Director Donato Cabrera and the California Symphony.

The rest of the program throws a spotlight on other members of Mahler’s social circle, Alexander von Zemlinsky and the little-known Hans Rott.

7:30 p.m. March 25. 4 p.m. March 26. $49-$79. Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Dr., Walnut Creek. 925-943-7469. www.californiasymphony.org

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale: ‘Amadigi di Gaula’

The differences between Handel’s operas and oratorios can sometimes seem narrow; aside from the difference in language (Italian versus English), the musical procedures are pretty similar. But the operas do partake of a slightly unhinged quality that the oratorios rarely touch. A case in point is “Amadigi di Gaula,” a tale of sorcery and vengeance that is due for performance by Richard Egarr and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, unforgettable in the group’s 2020 staging of “Aci, Galatea e Polifemo,” returns in the title role.

8 p.m. April 20-22. $80-$120. Taube Atrium Theater, 401 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-295-1900. www.philharmonia.org

Pocket Opera: ‘Albert Herring’

Pocket Opera tackles the music of Britten for the first time in its four-decade history, and what could be more appropriate than this delightful chamber comedy of a repressed young man who successfully throws off societal (and parental) expectations to find his own way in life? Tenor Sam Faustine takes the title role, with conductor David Drummond serving as music director and stage direction by Nicolas A. Garcia.

April 23-May 7. $30-$75. Locations in Berkeley, San Francisco and Mountain View. 415-972-8934. www.pocketopera.org

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Le Salon de Musiques is looking to kick off the new year and grow its local audience with a concert that Francois Chouchan, founder of the chamber music series, says is “something very important in my personal life and … artistic life.”

Le Salon de Musiques, now in its second season in La Jolla, presents monthly concerts where audiences sit close to the musicians and socialize afterward.

The performance on Sunday, Jan. 8, called “Winter Journey,” will begin at 4 p.m. at the La Jolla Woman’s Club, 7791 Draper Ave.

The concert’s title is the English translation of “Winterreise,” an 1827 composition by Austrian Franz Schubert that contains 24 German poems written by Wilhelm Müller for piano and baritone.

Chouchan, himself an experienced classical pianist, will perform the song cycle with Grammy Award-winning baritone Matthew Worth. Audience members will receive a program with the songs translated into English.

Schubert wrote “Winterreise” a few months before his death at age 31, Chouchan said. The composition is about a man talking to his lover in the middle of the night.

“He cannot reach her,” Chouchan said. “It’s cold, it’s winter and you have all around very dark elements. [It’s] very sad, melancholy, aggressive.”

“‘Winterreise’ is monumental, emotionally and physically,” he added. “There is nothing comparable in the German Romantic repertoire.”

Chouchan said the “music is like a Schubert testament,” as Schubert “was a very shy person, a lonely person. He just had a few friends. And the only way for him to express his feelings, his love … was through the music.”

“Most of his music is a kind of therapy,” Chouchan added. “And so throughout those 24 songs that we will perform on Jan. 8, it’s like revealing who he was.”

He said the piece is “very tricky” for both singer and pianist, both of whom are soloists during the performance.

Schubert is “a mentor in my life,” Chouchan said. “I always love performing Schubert because his music talks to me very much, very deeply.”

“When I was 7 or 8 years old living in France, I went to listen to this piece in Paris,” he said. “I had a kind of revelation. I was crying for 30 minutes on my seat after the performance.”

Since then, Chouchan said, he has felt connected to Schubert and returns to his compositions again and again.

Le Salon de Musiques founder Francois Chouchan will perform on piano during the series’ concert on Sunday, Jan. 8, at the La Jolla Woman’s Club.

(Hojoon Kim)

All Le Salon de Musiques performances are preceded by a talk from musicologist Nuvi Mehta about the history of the pieces or composers. The concerts are followed by a question-and-answer session with the artists and a high tea buffet and champagne from The French Gourmet.

During the post-concert social hour, guests are encouraged to talk to the artists and one another.

“I’m very enthusiastic about the reactivity of the people and our new attendees who just discovered us,” said Chouchan, who noted that the October and November shows were sold out.

He said he knows La Jolla is home to many classical music events, but “our intimate concept is different. People … come and make new friends and they share music in a way that they never did before.”

Beyond listening to a concert, Le Salon de Musiques is “a human experience,” Chouchan said. “I really hope we can grow and develop more and more to bring more music and more beautiful emotions to people in San Diego.”

All concerts are at 4 p.m. Sundays at the Woman’s Club. Tickets are $95 for adults and $45 for students. Discounts are available for those who buy tickets for multiple concerts.

For tickets or more information, visit lesalondemusiques.com.

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It’s an impossible task to sum up any year in art, but it feels especially challenging in 2022, a year in which we laughed with joy on Beyoncé’s dance floor, cried tears of secondhand embarrassment at Love Is Blind on Netflix, and scream-sang to Plains’ debut album. We asked Texas Monthly staffers and contributors to share their favorite moments of culture in 2022. The list that follows mixes high and low, pop culture and the avant-garde, and art to seek out along with streamable couch-potato fare. This year contained multitudes, just like Texas.

Beavis and Butt-head

The return of Beavis and Butt-head on Paramount Plus this June was a homecoming of sorts. Mike Judge’s cartoon hellions embraced their Texanness more explicitly than ever before, confirming at last that their fictional hometown of Highland is firmly situated within our fair state. Not that their surroundings matter much to them: Whether exploring the outer reaches of space in their new film Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe, or experimenting with beekeeping, body-switching, and virtual reality in the rebooted series, TV’s most static duo remained squarely focused on scoring and breaking stuff. In the best of the new episodes, we even caught up with Beavis and Butt-head as middle-aged men—still couch-bound and wallowing in their own crapulence, only now with beers and disability checks in hand. There’s comfort to be found in their stagnation; even as we get older and the world changes at a terrifying pace, Beavis and Butt-head remain at the immutable center of it all, reliably pointing out everything that sucks. — Sean O’Neal

“Boxes for Meaningless Work,” Walter de Maria

The most interesting work in Walter de Maria’s retrospective at the Menil Collection in Houston is not an artwork at all; rather, it’s an essay from 1960 that’s displayed in a case. De Maria is best known for his Lightning Field in remote New Mexico—a vast field filled with four hundred gleaming metal rods that rarely, in fact, attract lightning, but which attract devout art pilgrims. But early in his career, the artist made humble, explicitly “meaningless” works directing viewers to do things like move a ball from one box to another or walk endlessly between two paintings on opposite walls. Boxes for Meaningless Work (1961) involves two open cubes with the following instructions: “Transfer things from one box to the next box, back and forth, back and forth, etc. Be aware that what you are doing is meaningless.”

In the essay displayed nearby, de Maria explains what he’s up to: “Meaningless work can contain all of the best qualities of old art forms such as painting, writing, etc. It can make you feel and think about yourself, the outside world, . . . etc. without the limitations of the old art forms.” Throughout the twentieth century, artists were trying to upend centuries-old norms of art. This is how we got abstraction, and later on, conceptual art like de Maria’s. This is art about ideas, not about beautiful objects. But the end goal of his seemingly nonsensical sets of instructions is the same as the Old Masters’: to make you attentive to some aspect of your human experience. His meaningless work is a kind of meditation, and although it seems funny, de Maria is deadly earnest. He finishes the essay with two lines of text, no punctuation: “Grunt Get to work.” — Rainey Knudson

Chronophage, Chronophage

Chronophage are a classic Austin band, if yours is the Austin of the Butthole Surfers, Glass Eye, and Sincola: indie rock that’s both gender- and genre-expansive, with equal helpings of art-damage, hooks, and noise. The four-piece band’s excellent second album, 2020’s Th’Pig’kiss’d, was largely lost to the pandemic; Chronophage, which was produced by Craig Ross (Daniel Johnston, Patty Griffin, Shearwater), is a true reach-for-the-sky third album of even greater scope and polish. Songs like “Black Clouds” and “Summer to Fall” have the spikiness of British art-school post-punk, but also the odd dreaminess of such influences as Prefab Sprout and Game Theory. The band is now scattered between Texas and other parts of the country, with co-frontpersons Parker Allen and Sarah Beames moving on to new educational and artistic endeavors in New York City and South Florida, respectively. But then, leaving Austin is also a pretty Austin thing to do. — Jason Cohen

Corrections in Ink: A Memoir, Keri Blakinger

Keri Blakinger landed in Texas in 2016 as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle. She quickly proved herself to be one of the most essential voices in the state’s media landscape, covering criminal justice with a fervent tenacity and an uncommon empathy for those with the least power in the system—defendants, prisoners, and their allies. In her memoir, Blakinger depicts in vivid, compelling prose why criminal justice reporting isn’t just a job, but a calling—because she has been through it all herself. She tells her story of being busted with six ounces of heroin while a senior at Cornell University, resulting in a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, with an intimacy that brings to life not just her own humanity, but that of all of those with whom she served time. The book is a powerhouse of compassionate storytelling about some of the most marginalized among us, a group Blakinger serves well, both through the book and through her work at the criminal justice–focused journalistic outlet the Marshall Project. — Dan Solomon

From Scratch

I, like many folks (seriously, check the Twitter discourse), thought From Scratch, a Netflix limited series that debuted in October, would be a light, romantic reprieve à la the perennial Italy-escapism favorite Under the Tuscan Sun. Boy, were we all wrong. The show, starring Zoe Saldana, was written by Houston-born-and-raised sisters Tembi and Attica Locke, and is based on Tembi’s memoir of the same name. The first episode is frothy enough, with Saldana’s character (based on Tembi) traveling to Florence to learn about art and falling in love with a Sicilian chef named Lino. The emotional hammer comes down quickly after that. What follows are seven well-written, supremely well-acted, devastating episodes that incorporate parental abandonment, cancer, adoption, death, and grief, among other tough subjects. I was clicking “Next Episode” through a waterfall of my own tears. (Bonus: There are a few fun Texas-y references, including a shout-out to Greenberg Smoked Turkey.) — Kimya Kavehkar

I Walked With You A Ways, Plains

The debut album from Plains, a band composed of Dallas-area-native Jess Williamson and Alabaman Katie Crutchfield (aka Waxahatchee), feels like a modern version of the Chicks’ early-aughts endeavors. Stunning harmonies, evocative lyrics, banjo, fiddle, slide guitar, plenty of twang, and just an overall feeling of, well, wide open space. It is the sort of music to wail along with, happily, as you’re driving in your car. With songs written by both Williamson and Crutchfield in a kind of alternating Lennon-McCartney model, I Walked With You A Ways is a gift to Americana fans everywhere. But it seems extra special for anyone like me, who grew up with the Chicks. Cowgirls, take me away. — Emily McCullar

“The Infinite”

Immersive virtual reality experiences based on the lives of popular artists have become as common as street art in major cities. As a frequent museum visitor, I find them both entertaining and kind of appalling. I don’t think Van Gogh and Monet really need that kind of help. But immersive mediums can be incredibly affective when they present something entirely new. Science- and nature-themed shows seem to work especially well. “The Infinite” takes you “aboard” the International Space Station so convincingly it feels like you’re the one spacewalking. You could experience it, well, almost an infinite number of times and see something different with each trip. After opening in Houston last winter, it went to California and is on view in San Francisco through January. — Molly Glentzer

Love Is Blind

This fall, Love Is Blind, Nick and Vanessa Lachey’s deranged social experiment on Netflix, returned for a third season, this time set in Dallas. As in previous seasons, individuals looking for long-term love dated one another—and got engaged—without ever laying eyes on their partners. This time around the dating pool, the arrangement resulted in saline tears, borderline abuse, a blunt discussion about abortion, and a conversation about Cuties so dissected as to be this generation’s Zapruder film. After the series finale aired in November, it seemed everyone in the nation was transfixed, picking sides between warring couples and inserting the newly minted reality television stars into the narratives of our choosing. Is love truly blind? It’s still unclear. Does this TV show serve as the ultimate blank slate on which to project our own issues with romance and partnership? You bet. — Taylor Prewitt

The Mars Volta, The Mars Volta

The Mars Volta has long billed itself as the name of the creative partnership between El Paso natives Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. For about a decade, until the band’s hiatus in 2012, that partnership sounded like epic, multi-movement jams that could stretch psychedelic freakouts across a single thirty-minute song. When Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez announced the band’s return in the fall, they did so with a single that had a dramatically different sound. Were the Mars Volta a pop band now? The answer, on the band’s first self-titled album, was yes—and that’s a good thing. The Mars Volta featured fourteen tracks spread over 44 minutes, with Bixler-Zavala’s elastic voice in the forefront and Rodriguez-Lopez’s layered guitar experiments adding some extra interest to the catchy melodies. The Mars Volta have been many things since forming in 2003, but “accessible” is a new one—and it’s a good look for a band that had little left to prove. — D.S.

Palomino, Miranda Lambert

Is Miranda Lambert our last great rock star? Her last two solo albums—2019’s Wildcard and this year’s Palomino—make a strong case that the East Texas native might well be. Palomino opens with a slinky bass line, big hooks, and the declaration that Lambert’s got her “own kind of country—kinda funky,” and does she ever. The album pulls a handful of songs off of Lambert’s 2021 release—the pandemic project The Marfa Tapes, a lo-fi collection of songs she recorded in West Texas with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall—recontextualizing tracks such as the “Jolene” send-up “Geraldene” as full-band jams with rollicking guitar solos and a percussive stomp that’s a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. She leans further into the latter as the album progresses, digging deep into the archives of rock history to collaborate with eighties new wavers the B-52’s (on “Music City Queen”), channeling Fleetwood Mac on “Waxahachie,” and nodding to Prince on the gender-bending “If I Was a Cowboy.” Rock star, country star, or something else entirely, whatever Lambert is, we’re lucky to have her. — D.S.

“The Permian Recordings,” Phil Peters

This site-specific sound and sculptural installation in a post-industrial lot on the east side of Austin was a highlight of November’s Austin Studio Tour and a reminder of what makes the city’s grassroots cultural scene so special—despite what you may have heard about it becoming a bland surf-park town. It’s hard to imagine this smart, immersive, and far-out art-viewing experience anywhere else. Peters collected audio samples of fracking machinery by burying microphones underground in the Permian Basin oil and gas fields of West Texas. Then, to make these low-frequency vibrations audible to the human ear, he built a massive, forty-foot-long subwoofer in an outdoor concrete culvert provided by venerable Austin arts nonprofit Co-Lab Projects. The result is an eerie, pulsating machine you can step inside to feel the inhuman hum of the extraction economy within your body. — Michael Agresta

Renaissance, Beyoncé

Beyoncé’s latest album was such an unexpected delight that, five months after its release, I haven’t been able to stop listening. Renaissance beautifully embraces the history of Black and LGBTQ musicians and icons such as Big Freedia and Beyoncé’s own Uncle Johnny with a long index of iconic samples and featured artists, all while being infectiously joyous and fun. Just one example of the multifaceted energy that Beyoncé brings to Renaissance is “Church Girl,” a bouncy twerk anthem that samples the gospel song “Center of Thy Will” by the Clark Sisters, and still manages to convey a sense a spiritual triumph and salvation. “I been up, I been down / Feel like I move mountains / Got friends that cried fountains,” Beyoncé begins, and despite (or because of) all that strife, she’s “warning everybody, soon as I get in this party / I’m gon’ let go of this body, I’m gonna love on me” because “Nobody can judge me, but me / I was born free.” I love this song, and it’s not even one of my top five most played from the album. At a moment when people are attempting to erase us, Renaissance tells us to celebrate and hold onto our Black and queer history and culture. Make no mistake: times are hard, but with the help of albums like Renaissance, we can still create space to feel cozy in our skin, celebrate what makes us alien, and remember that we were born free. — Doyin Oyeniyi

“Ropa Usada,” Valleyesque, Fernando Flores

In May, Rio Grande Valley–born, Austin-based writer Fernando Flores released the short-story collection Valleyesque, his third book and follow-up to surrealist border noir Tears of the Trufflepig. Flores’s story “Ropa Usada,” available online in full, is a delirious outpost of his jazzy, post-magic-realist style, piling on fantastical details in the service of capturing real, hard-
to-describe feelings, often about life in Texas. Here, a broke grad student named Cassie drives to her hometown to buy used clothing to resell on the internet from a giant warehouse-style store “down by the border in the maquiladora district.” Dream images evoke the vastness of such stores—women pulling sleeves like ripe carrots from undulating hills of clothes; a den made of jerseys of sports teams that no longer exist, like the Houston Oilers; a village in the aisles with meat roasting on a trash-bin fire. Lest you think this will be a goof of a story where the quiet epiphanies of realism are impossible, here’s Cassie when she’s almost buried in a cascade of
used clothes: “It made her sad to think that, in what she felt were her final moments, what tumbled through her mind was all the money she owed: not her mother, her family, the people she loved, or the possessions she held dear, but her crushing debt.” Flores has found a cool sound and knows how to play. — M.A.

The Sea Drift, The Delines

Amy Boone was one of two singing sisters in the Damnations, a beloved Austin alt-country band back when the term “alt-country” was still new. More than twenty years later, her gorgeously lived-in, heart-tugging but understated vocals are at the center of this Portland, Oregon–based band, led by songwriter and novelist Willy Vlautin. Vlautin both writes for Boone and is inspired by their conversations about Texas, life, and music; The Sea Drift is a Gulf Coast soul record, noirish and sultry, with most of its hard-luck songs set around Galveston, and sonic inspiration from the likes of Bobbie Gentry and Tony Joe White. In 2022, The Delines played fifty shows in Europe and four shows in the Pacific Northwest; some festival or venue in Texas needs to fix that in 2023. — J.C.

“Soul of Black Folks,” Amoako Boafo

The writing of W.E.B. Du Bois has inspired a lot of great visual art, books and film. His ideas manifest powerfully in the nuanced portraits of Boafo, a 38-year-old Ghanaian who lives in Vienna. Instantly recognizable for their spare composition and bold colors, and the finger-painted skin and steady gazes of subjects that include major celebrities (think Bey and Jay-Z), Boafo’s works capture the thoughtful complexity of contemporary Black identity. Discovered by Kehinde Wiley on Instagram, Boafo caused a collectors’ frenzy before museum curators could catch up. Contemporary Arts Museum Houston presented Boafo’s first solo museum show last summer, including a site-specific mural—now painted over—that collectors would love to have peeled off the wall. The point was that it couldn’t be sold. — M.G.

Top Gun: Maverick

To borrow what Harry Styles said about a film that wouldn’t make this list even if it had a Texas connection, what I liked about Top Gun: Maverick was that “the movie feels like a movie, like a real, like, you know, ‘go to the theater’ film movie.” I’m not the only one who thinks this, because a lot of folks went to the theater to see Top Gun, which set box office records when it came out in May. It is the platonic ideal of a big-screen movie: expensive, loud, patriotic to the point of being practically propagandistic. It had heart, speed, practical effects, sweaty beach sports, and a handful of mega-charming movie stars, including Austin’s own Glen Powell—plus a near-perfect Lady Gaga song on the soundtrack. — E.M.

Voids, Old Fire

As the father to two young, rambunctious children, and living as I do in Austin, a town bursting at its glass-and-steel seams with residents, I’ve never felt less alone in my life. Yet this year, I still found myself utterly beguiled by Old Fire’s Voids, a record that is consumed by loss, absence, and the kind of cavernous lonesomeness that currently only exists in my romanticized imagination. Composer John Mark Lapham drew upon his own feelings of isolation, which he experienced while growing up gay in the largely conservative town of Abilene, to create a haunted suite of songs that land somewhere at the nexus of spiritual folk, ambient electronic, and Massive Attack–inspired trip-hop. Guest vocalists like Austin’s Bill Callahan and Emily Cross change the colors to suit their respective moods, but there’s a cohesive mood of mourning and rumination that remains broken. It’s an album that feels as expansive and tranquil as the West Texas plains that inspired it, but take it from me: it plays just as well when you’re cooped up in the city, longing for a little space of your own. — S.O.

Roxy Music vintage 1975 signified a more dance-oriented incarnation of the musical sophisticates than that of previous years. But not only did they retain all of their inventiveness and style, but as the year ended they had just enjoyed their highest-ranking UK single to date and their fifth Top 10 album in a row.

The album was Siren, from which that first single was the brilliantly incisive “Love Is The Drug,” a clever envisioning of the soon-to-explode discotheque culture. Written by Bryan Ferry and Andy Mackay, it reached No.2 in the UK, beaten to the top only by David Bowie’s reissue of “Space Oddity,” and helped to fuel a No.4 debut for the album.

Then on December 27, the second and final single from Siren took its chart bow. “Both Ends Burning” is a less celebrated Ferry composition but was cutting-edge in its own way, with synthesizer detail by Eddie Jobson, Mackay’s ever-urgent saxophones and Ferry’s impassioned lead.

The single entered the UK chart at No.40, and although it didn’t become one of Roxy’s bigger hits, went on to spend two weeks at No.25. The B-side was a live version of “For Your Pleasure,” recorded only a few weeks earlier at the group’s Empire Pool, Wembley show.

Siren was the third Roxy Music album in a row to benefit from the bass playing of John Gustafson, a vastly experienced player who had been with such 1960s beat-era groups as the Big Three and the Merseybeats. He also toured extensively with Roxy in the mid-1970s. “I can usually find something in any band that will carry me through musically,” Gustafson later told Mojo, “but Roxy was puzzling initially as nobody seemed to be directing it.

Listen to the best of Roxy Music on Apple Music and Spotify.

“Bryan would have little more than a chord sequence. It was often a complete shambles at first but it would always seem to work. Something would take shape. I would usually stick with the first thing I came up with to anchor it. All Bryan would say was, ‘Make it sound black.’”

Story continues

Buy the super deluxe edition of the 1972 debut album Roxy Music.

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