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‘RX 100’ (2018) is a tale remembered for its twist and other unexpected elements. Director Ajay Bhupathi came to be seen as a maverick with a difference after that movie. The filmmaker’s third film is all set to be produced on his new banner, A Creative Works, which was launched recently. Ajay Bhupathi has collaborated with Mudhra Media Works for the project.
The director of this new-age genre film is glad to make an exciting announcement. He has collaborated with one of the most happening and gold-standard music composers in the country: B Ajaneesh Loknath. The composer needs no introduction. ‘Kantara‘ and ‘Vikrant Rona‘ have consolidated his image. The films featured some of the biggest musical hits. If ‘Varaha Roopam’ was transcendental, ‘Ra Ra Rakkamma’ radiated amazing creativity.
Ajaneesh wants to deliver a sumptuous musical output with director Ajay Bhupathi. Surely, the director’s inputs are going to take their next film together to the next level.
A Creative Works and Mudhra Media Works are going to make this film into a high-end, rich and entertaining film.
Must Read: Rashmika Mandanna After The Banning Controversy Finally Acknowledges Kantara’s Rishab Shetty, Rakshit Shetty For Giving Her An Opportunity In The Film Industry
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George Taylor, music teacher. DRSAM, BMus, ARCM, FRSAMD. Born: 1934. Died: 2022, aged 88
© George Taylor had a gift for helping students tap their talents
George Guthrie Taylor, one of Scotland’s most influential and inspiring musical educators, has died at the age of 88.
Born in 1934, George grew up in Dumfries and, although baptised into the Church of Scotland, sang as a boy chorister in the choir of Saint John’s Episcopal church, discovering an interest in choral music and composition. He studied violin, piano and composition at Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music, graduating DRSAM, and took further qualifications from Durham university (BMus) and the Royal College of Music in London (ARCM).
After working as a music teacher in Glasgow schools in the late 1950s and 1960s he joined the staff of the RSAMD in 1969 as a lecturer in harmony, counterpoint and composition teaching in the Senior and Junior departments. He also taught at the Music School of Douglas Academy (Milngavie) as its first harmony teacher while working for the SQA as an examiner, setting the Higher Music syllabus, and was influential in designing the courses which would lead to the RSAMD attaining degree-awarding status in 1994, the first Conservatoire in the UK to do so.
He was instrumental in establishing extramural classes in Music at Glasgow University, attracting many adult learners, and from 1982-2007 was organist at Carstairs Church. In 2000 he was made a Fellow of the RSAMD and retired from there in 2001.
Retirement did not agree with George, however, so when he was approached by the Aberdeen City Music School in 2002 to head up its academic music department he accepted the invitation and travelled between Lanark (his home from 1967 until his death) and Aberdeen to teach there for three days a week, finally retiring in 2020.
A committed Christian, George converted to Catholicism in 2007 and regularly served as organist at Saint Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Lanark, playing for the visit of Cardinal Keith O’Brien.
His influence on church music throughout the UK includes former students occupying lectureships at Glasgow University, London’s Royal Academy, the Royal College of Music, King’s College London, Cambridge University and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, formerly the RSAMD. He was fluent in French, Italian and German, and was also highly proficient in mathematics and an accomplished botanist.
Although remembered as an extraordinary teacher – academy students queued up to be taught by him – George was also an incredible musician; a versatile keyboard player, both as pianist and organist, a skilled choir director, composer, arranger, an experienced orchestrator and, in his earlier years, a sought-after chamber musician regularly appearing alongside Joan and Hester Dickson as guest violinist.
George pursued academic research into the music of Swiss composer Willy Burkhard and had assimilated the music of Luca Marenzio and Claudio Merulo long before professional Early Music groups began recording their music. He would surely have become one of the world’s great composers had his self-effacing nature not prohibited any such ambition, and he never sought academic or administrative promotion since these would only distract from his intellectual pursuits and vocation as an educator. George was most himself when he was teaching Harmony & Counterpoint, however, and in this area he was quite simply a phenomenon. He had absorbed the music of every composer imaginable and music would drip from his pen onto manuscript paper with ease. As a virtuoso teacher he gave others the ability to learn for themselves so that when he was pressed to write the definitive book on Harmony & Counterpoint he would reply that his students were his book. “It’s not the problem itself that’s difficult” he would say, “it’s how you think of it that makes it difficult. Change your approach and the problem disappears.” And with this philosophy he inspired generations of students, so that those who struggled to get past the first chapter of any music theory book suddenly found that they were composing freely.
He felt that if students had spent an hour with a teacher, they should leave the room being able to do something that they couldn’t do when they entered it, and while he lamented the later watering down of music curricula he was never snobbish about what might enthuse students musically. He was also extremely skilled at recognising what kind of musician a young person might become, whether they would be a performer or whether their gifts lay elsewhere, and this made George a powerful asset to Douglas Academy, Aberdeen City Music School and the Junior Department of the RSAMD; hundreds of musicians and teachers credit him with helping them recognise their calling.
But while he could improvise a fugue, a chorale prelude, a Song Without Words with astonishing fluency, he tookmore pride in the fact that students who struggled would be sent to him as the person most likely to be able to help. He was also years ahead of the profession in terms of recognising learning disabilities and developed methods to help students effectively.
Generations of students will remember him as the most outstanding teacher of music they would ever meet and one of the finest musicians Scotland has produced, but George was also a man of genuine humility, sincere faith, unshakeable loyalty, loveable humour and a sorely missed friend.
He is survived by his sister Mary, his nieces Enid and Helen, and his legacy continues through the work of the thousands of students he taught throughout a stellar career which extended over 60 years.
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Parag Chhabra
Even though he started off
as a vocalist, it was during his
college days in Pune that Indore-
born musician Parag Chhabra
started looking for opportu-
nities beyond just vocal expertise.
Trained in hindustani classical music,
he soon joined AR Rahman’s KM Music
Conservatory in Chennai, where he was
eventually discovered by the legendary
composer. His shift to Mumbai in 2018
got him his first break as a composer in
the film Waah Zindagi starring Naveen
Kasturia, Sanjay Mishra and Vijay Raaz.
Currently, he is actively working as an
independent music director with films
like Good Luck Jerry, Jai Mummy Di,
An Action Hero and the National award-
winning film Turtle. We speak to him to
learn more about his musical style ahead
of the digital debut of An Action Hero.
How would you describe your music philosophy?
This journey requires me to seek out
knowledge; hence I can’t remain fixated
on ideas. I truly believe music should
soothe and heal people, especially in
today’s times. I would say healing people
through music is one of my major call-
ings.
How would you describe your musical stint in An Action Hero?
This is my second film with Anand L
Rai as my first film with him was Good
Luck Jerry. For An Action Hero, the
theme was the first thing we cracked
and it did quite well after the track’s ini-
tial release. It was then that we thought
of turning it into a full-fledged song. The song mainly focused on a rap battle so as to bring out the concept of conflict
through it, with the theme music inter-
playing in between. There’s another
song called Ghere that explores the hip
hop space with lots of melody in it. It
has been sung by Vivek Hariharan and
that rap part was executed by D’Evil
of Gully Gang Cypher fame. The film
is extremely urban with strong doses
of dark humour in it, so, we tried to
keep the music as urban as we could,
bringing in western elements, as well.
We have used uncommon instruments
like the dotara from Bengal and the
pipa from China. There are a total of
fourteen instrumental layerings used
in the songs.
This collaboration is symbolic of the friendship between their families which goes back two generations. The tale goes that Rahman’s father, composer, arranger and musician RK Sekar, and Subramaniam’s father, Prof. V Lakshminarayana, used to live on the same street in Mylapore, Chennai.
Published Date – 04:15 PM, Thu – 19 January 23
Hyderabad: Celebrated musicians AR Rahman and Dr. L Subramaniam have joined hands to celebrate commonality and the gift of life virtually at the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival. The composer and violinist have rendered a musical tribute to violin legend Prof. V Lakshminarayana.
This collaboration is symbolic of the friendship between their families which goes back two generations. The tale goes that Rahman’s father, composer, arranger and musician RK Sekar, and Subramaniam’s father, Prof. V Lakshminarayana, used to live on the same street in Mylapore, Chennai.
This special collaboration, which has been rearranged by Rahman and Subramaniam, features the artists in their family along with the duo. Centred on “Don’t Leave Me”, a song composed by Dr. L Subramaniam that Rahman grew up with, the music video comprises performances by Rahman’s children Khatija Rahman, Raheema Rahman, AR Ameen, and Subramaniam’s daughter Bindu Subramaniam and Subramaniam’s granddaughter Mahati Subramaniam, along with the musicians’ dear friend and illustrious percussionist Sivamani.
About the rendition of “Don’t Leave Me”, Rahman says, “Here we are: three generations at the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival. The friendship between our two families goes back two generations. In celebrating and honouring the violin virtuoso, Dr. L Subramaniam’s father, Prof. V Lakshminarayana, our families have come together to perform a song I grew up with, ‘Don’t Leave Me’, composed by Dr. LS whose timeless instrumentation and compositions continue to enrich, inspire, and influence all generations.”
Rahman adds, “Through this collaboration, we celebrate music and friendship, and hope that this tribute brings people together to not think about their differences but to see how we may all unite to create art and change.”
It opens with a spellbinding improvised composition by Rahman and Subramaniam who are joined by Sivamani as the trio renders a delicate piano, violin and percussive intro. Combining the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, the instrumental tribute is a bridge between the past and the future, tradition and innovation, celebration and commemoration. It notably also features a spoken word performance by Bindu Subramaniam that’s dedicated to her grandfather, Prof. V Lakshminarayana and the divine.
About the collaboration, Dr. L Subramaniam says, “It gives me immense pleasure and honour to collaborate with one of the greatest film composers and a visionary musician ARR. We have recorded a composition called ‘Don’t Leave Me’ which is dedicated to my father and guru Prof. V Lakshminarayana. This video has three generations performing together for the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival 2023. Thanks a lot to ARR for his magic touch.”
Listen to the composition here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hVxBFrQ-Ps
1 Up and at it – what is your morning routine?
My morning routine goes either of two ways – either I waken early and it’s either straight up to my attic studio at 6.30am with a cup of tea, or else I’ll have a lazy lie-in.
2 What might you eat in a typical working day for…
Breakfast? I usually don’t eat breakfast.
Lunch? Before Christmas, I was living on prepared soups or salads for lunch.
Evening meal? Of late, the evening meal has been a microwave dinner.
3 Is nutrition important to you – do you take health supplements?
I take multivitamins every morning, but my diet could definitely improve – I have a very sweet tooth.
4 Ever been on a diet – if so, how did it go?
Yes, I’ve been on a diet a few times. The most extreme one consisted of a five-day juice diet where I consumed nothing but fruit and veg juices for five whole days. By day three, I was hallucinating cheeseburgers.
5 Weekend treat?
A weekend treat for me would be a cheeky wee Nando’s delivery.
6 How do you keep physically and mentally fit?
I like going on long walks. I walked part of the Camino de Santiago over two weeks in May and it was one of the best things I have ever done. I battle with depression, so it was also good for the head as well. I’ll definitely be going again next year.
7 Best tip for everyday fitness?
Hmm, you’re asking the wrong person, sorry.
8 Were you a fan of schools sports/PE or do you have a memory from those days that you would rather forget?
I wasn’t a fan of sports, really, except tennis. We had council grass courts where I grew up in Ballycastle and all of us kids were mad into it – all day, every day, all summer long. In school, however, for PE… well, I was often found skiving in the music department when that was happening…
9 Teetotal or tipple?
Teetotal.
10 Stairs or lift?
Depends on how many flights we are talking about.
11 What book are you currently reading?
Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard – a combination of crime thriller and dystopian fiction.
12 Best Netflix?
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a favourite and a great watch.
13 Most surprising thing you’ve learned about yourself over the pandemic?
I was surprised to learn that I’m pretty comfortable being on my own.
14 Any new skills or hobbies?
No new skills, but I’d love to train as a pilot – if anyone has a spare £100,000?
15 How do you relax?
I love going for walks, particularly near and around Ballycastle. There are so many spectacular walking routes up there, but my favourite place is the ancient woodland, Breen Oakwood. There is fairy magic in the air at Breen – you wouldn’t want to break a twig.
16 What are your goals for 2023?
To walk the Camino again and successfully co-write my first musical of the year: Mirrorball, for Replay Theatre Company, which is on the main stage at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast in March.
17 What time do you get to bed and do you think you get enough sleep?
I have been going to bed fairly early since the pandemic, but I usually fall asleep any time between 11 o’clock and 2am. I usually get five-to-eight hours sleep these days, which I think is fine.
18 Biggest gripe or regret?
My biggest regret is not seeing Prince live in concert before he died.
19 Have your priorities in life or perspectives changed?
No, they haven’t really changed. I just try to keep working on my mental health and try to be kind to others.
20 Has coronavirus changed your attitude towards your own mortality?
No, Covid hasn’t changed my attitude, at all. Depression has long been a more threatening illness for me. Coronavirus was devastating, but there are also mental illnesses in the world of which we have methods (medical and therapeutic) of managing, to some extent, but still don’t have full understanding of, or cures for. Although mental illness has become an acceptable part of the global and local conversations in recent years, I think it is still very much a taboo and a very difficult conversation to have. All I can say is: reach out for help, whether that’s to close friends or family, or to medical professionals. Life can be tough for any number of reasons, but it is still a beautiful and precious thing. And tomorrow can be better, even if we’re not able to see it today.
:: Garth McConaghie is composer and musical director for Replay Theatre’s Mirrorball which takes to the stage later this year and is also part of the creative team for Big Telly’s Frankenstein’s Monster is Drunk and the Sheep Have All Jumped the Fences being staged at the Naughton Studio at the Lyric, February 1-5.
Jeff Beck and Stevie Wonder in 2011. Photo: Kevin Mazur/WireImage
Stevie Wonder has given a new and rare interview to the Detroit Free Press about his musical collaboration with Jeff Beck. “A great soul,” as Wonder calls him, Beck died on January 10 at the age of 78.
The two giants were introduced, at a studio in New York, by producers by Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil when they were working with the Motown artist on the record that became his 1972 masterpiece Talking Book.
“I really didn’t know too much about him,” Wonder says of Beck. “But then I heard him play in New York. We were working on ‘Lookin’ for Another Pure Love’ and I said to him, ‘Why don’t you play on this?’ He thought that would be great. He laid one part down, then another part and another part. It was just amazing.
“It was just a wonderful thing, the whole deal,” he goes on. “He gave it such a mixture — sort of a jazz feel with a bluesy feel, with the chord structure he took from what I had done. It was great. He put his touch on it. It was just really cool.”
Wonder reveals in the interview that he has been listening to some of his older music with his son Mandla, 17, and that after hearing of Beck’s passing, they listened to “Lookin’ for Another Pure Love.”
“When I heard it today, it was emotional for me because I could remember the moment,” he says. “There’s just something about music. I know for you, as a fan, songs take you back to a space in time – you’re right there, right then. The same thing happens for us as writers and singers.”
In their 1972 encounter, Wonder invited Beck to record a new composition of his, “Superstition.” Rumors have long swirled that the song was unrecorded at the time, and intended for Beck. Stevie says in the new interview that he had already completed a rough track when he played it to the guitarist.
Nevertheless, encouraged by Wonder, Beck did have designs on recording it, and did so with his new trio, Beck, Bogert & Appice, in a more rock-oriented version that became part of their eponymous debut album for Epic. In the meantime, it had become the first single from Talking Book, released in the same week as the album in October 1972 – a decision not necessarily to Wonder’s liking.
“I told Motown, ‘Listen, I did this for Jeff Beck,” he tells the Free Press. “He likes the song. I thought we should make ‘[You Are The] Sunshine of My Life’ the first single. They said, ‘No, no, no, no. The first single should be ‘Superstition.’ So I went back to Jeff and had that discussion.”
He concludes of his English collaborator: “He was a great soul who did great music. I’m glad that I was able to meet him and have him in my life, giving some of his gift to my music.”
Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT) is making that possible with Test Flight 2023—an annual opportunity that grants playwrights from around the country access to the James Levin Theatre, where they choose casts and directors and design their show’s artwork. The playwrights also receive assistance from production staff and stage managers, marketing and advertising support, and a small percentage of box office revenue.
The call for 2023 submissions took place last summer. Selections were based on criteria that included the project’s potential and whether the work is truly production-ready and aligned with CPT’s mission of producing groundbreaking performances.
“Test Flight is a critical piece of the spectrum of opportunities we have created,” says Raymond Bobgan, CPT’s executive artistic director. “The idea behind this series is to nurture artists who are on their way to full production and need support in the pre-production phase to create a workshop production.”
Bobgan adds that the experience of staging their works in progress can be both helpful to the artists and entertaining and enlightening for the audience.
“Artists can utilize Test Flight to beta test their nearly finished work,” he explains. “New work celebrates one of the most essential elements of theater—it is immediately present and live. And that means it is also a special experience for audiences to get in on the ground floor and witness a critical and extraordinary side of theater.”
This year’s Test Flight runs from this Thursday, Jan. 19 through Saturday, Feb. 25, with six productions chosen to take centerstage over the next five weeks.
Here is a rundown of the six plays taking flight this year
Written and directed by Jaiie Dayo Aliya.
A woman recently released from prison, and her loved ones, experience a crisis of faith when her 15-year-old daughter becomes pregnant under mysterious, and perhaps miraculous, circumstances.
About the playwright: Jaiie Dayo Aliya is an Akron Arts Alive and Knight Arts Challenge award-winning playwright, actor, and musician. They studied at Kent State University where they majored in theater arts and Pan-African studies. Aliya is artistic director of Ma’Sue Productions, which has produced eight plays in the last nine years.
Written by Jeanne Madison and directed by Michael Oatman.
On the eve of their daughter’s cotillion, the Hopegoodes, an affluent African American family, see their plans for the perfect debutante ball collide with a Black Lives Matter protest. And that’s not all that collides—their secrets and competing desires get shaken loose by the nearness of the protest and tear at the fabric of this family, challenging what, exactly, it is to be Black.
About the Playwright: Jeanne Madison is a member of the Dramatist Guild. Her plays have been performed at CPT and the Ensemble Theatre, where she is a member of Stagewrights. Favorite roles include the PBS broadcast of “Greenwood: An American Dream Destroyed,” “The Velocity of Autumn” at Karamu House, “Picnic” at Oberlin Theater, and Left In Ink at Cleveland Public Theatre. Her on-camera work includes numerous television commercials and films, including Netflix’s “White Noise.”
Written by Tania Benites, directed by Kari Barclay, and co-produced by Teatro Público de Cleveland.
Using a self-help book “Hypnosis for Self-Confidence,” customer service representative Maria seeks ultimate self-improvement to succeed in the corporate world. However, she soon discovers that the best version of herself may be her worst enemy.
About the Playwright: Benites is a Peruvian-born and Cleveland-raised theater artist. As an actress, Tania has worked at many theaters in Northeast Ohio, including Cleveland Public Theatre, Teatro Público de Cleveland, Talespinner Children’s Theatre, Ensemble Theatre, LatinUs Theater Company, Clague Playhouse, and Rubber City Theatre. As a playwright, Benites’ work has been featured in ¡Obras en Evolución!, a festival of new play readings by Teatro Público de Cleveland in 2017 and 2018, where the beginnings of “Alter” were formed.
“Anna of Mariupol—Act 1” (a short rock opera set in present-day Ukraine), is written and produced by David C. Tabar and directed by Christina Dupre.
An innocent, young Anna finds family and friends caught up in sudden military conflict and seeks comfort from a higher order.
About the Playwright: Tabar once played keyboard in Westlake’s rock band The Color while playing trumpet throughout his school years. Today he’s best known for music that he composes, produces, and releases on Blackpool Records, including rock, Classical, and Jazz/Blues/Gospel. Tabar also co-wrote and co-produced the 2018 film and music production, “Angel in a Foxhole,” in a collaboration with Dean Love Films in New York.
Two strangers meet in an abstract environment. Through the shapeshifting of identity and setting, the pair explore how to have difficult conversations in real time.
Dixon, a theater teacher and coach at Cleveland School of the Arts, has credits that include productions at Cleveland Public Theater; Dobama Theatre, Karamu House, and Cleveland Play House, as well as many popular national television series and films.
Written, composed and music-directed by Obediya Jones-Darrell and directed by Tara Taylor.
Set in the golden era of rail, “Jacket of Blue” is a play with music about the struggles faced by Black train porters in the 1920s. With original music inspired by Ragtime, Jazz, Folk, Gospel, and Broadway traditions, the story follows a dignified and conflicted porter who must face the best and worst humanity has to offer during a journey across generations that transcends culture.
Jones-Darrell is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, producer, filmmaker, playwright, music composer, sound designer, and lyricist of Canadian origin and African descent. While he spent his formative years in Nova Scotia and British Columbia, Cleveland is now the place he calls home. Over the past three years, his work has been performed internationally in theater and film festivals on five continents. In 2019, he was selected as one of Canada’s 20 emerging diverse filmmakers by Toronto’s Reel World Film Festival.
All Test Flight ticket prices fall under CPT’s Choose What You Pay program. All shows start at 7:30 p.m. For more information about Test Flight 2023, call (216) 631-2727 or visit the CPT website.
The Tennessee Department of Tourist Development unveiled a Tennessee Music Pathways marker honoring Francis Craig in Downtown Dickson on Jan. 11
Craig, a Dickson native, was honored for his musical contributions that include writing and recording Nashville’s first chart-topping song and Vanderbilt University’s most well-known fight song as well as decades leading his own jazz band.
It is the second Tennessee Music Pathways marker installed in Holland Park after country music singer and Dickson County resident Craig Morgan was honored in October.
Dickson Mayor Don Weiss Jr., Dickson County Mayor Bob Rial, Dickson County Chamber President Jennie Wagner, Clement Railroad Hotel Museum Director Zach Kinslow and Department of Tourist Development Middle Tennessee Division Manager Ashley DeRossett joined descendants of Craig in a ceremony at the museum before unveiling the marker in the city park next door.
“The City of Dickson’s connection to the music industry goes back as far as the beginning of the city,” said Weiss. “As part of Middle Tennessee and a neighbor to Music City USA, this area has been home and host to many of country music’s brightest stars. But the musical connections of the Dickson area also have included early rock and roll influences, gospel, southern rock, blues, jazz and one of the early leaders of the big band era, who we honor today.”
A Vanderbilt season ticket holder and fan, Rial welcomed family members of Craig, who wrote one of the university’s fight songs, “Dynamite!”
“I was telling the family earlier, I can never get all the lyrics right, but I can hum that song from the beginning as well as anybody in this room,” Rial said.
The son of a Methodist minister assigned to Dickson, Craig was born Sept. 10, 1900, less than a year after the town was incorporated. He showed early signs of inheriting the talents of a pianist mother and was playing piano by ear by the age of 10.
While a student at Vanderbilt University, Craig formed his own jazz orchestra called the Vanderbilt Jazz Band, gaining popularity playing dances in the region. When the school’s chancellor told Craig he would have to change the band’s name, he left college and soon was the bandleader at the iconic Hermitage Hotel in Nashville.
During his 25 years there, he helped launch the careers of stars like Dinah Shore, Snooky Lanson and Kitty Kallen.Craig would direct the first studio band at Nashville’s most famous radio station WSM when it began broadcasting in 1925 and also would be a deejay at Chicago’s WGN in 1940 and host “Sunday Down South” on the NBC radio network for 12 years.
Craig’s 1947 recording of his composition “Near You” sold more than 3 million copies and was the first record produced in Nashville to hit number one on the Billboard magazine Honor Roll of Hits list, where it remained for 17 consecutive weeks, a record that stood until “Old Town Road” topped the chart for 19 consecutive weeks 72 years later. “Near You” would be recorded by legends such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, Pat Boone, The Andrews Sisters and George Jones and Tammy Wynette.
Before Vanderbilt was to face the 4th-ranked Tennessee Volunteers in a 1938 football game, Craig composed and debuted “Dynamite!” as a university fight song. While Tennessee won that game 14-0 on the way to winning the school’s first National Championship, “Dynamite!” has since become Vanderbilt University’s most popular fight song and 85 years later still is played at Commodore football games, basketball games and other sporting events.Craig died in Sewanee in 1966.
“While not as well known today as some of the other music stars who are connected to Dickson, Francis Craig has a legacy that endures today more than a century after being born here,” Weiss said. “The City of Dickson is pleased to honor native son Francis Craig by hosting the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development’s Tennessee Music Pathway marker in his honor here in Holland Park as a tour stop on the Soundtrack of America.”
DeRossett said a third marker is currently planned for Holland Park, which will honor former Dickson resident John Rich, formerly of Lonestar and half of the country duo Big and Rich.
Launched by the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development in 2018, Tennessee Music Pathways is an online planning guide that connects visitors to the state’s rich musical heritage at tnmusicpathways.com. From the largest cities to the smallest communities, Tennessee Music Pathways stretches across all 95 counties and features hundreds of landmarks from the seven genres of music that call Tennessee home.
For more than a century, proportional time has been a constant presence in philosophical and psychological studies of thinkers such as Paul Janet and William James who have formulated the concept to explain why and how the sensation of time accelerates as we age. Days, months, and years become smaller and smaller fractions of our existences, while new experiences fade into those that came before and after. Reminiscing about the onset of the pandemic in 2020, this effect is magnified tenfold. That initial period of ‘new normal’, which sometimes appeared to bring an exciting break from mundanity, today feels like a memory lapse, a nondescript progression of events whose reality you might even be tempted to question. Like Proust’s madeleines, Kali Malone’s Does Spring Hide Its Joy serves to remind us of those times.
Recorded with Stephen O’Malley on guitar, Lucy Railton on cello, and a skeleton crew of technicians in Spring 2020 at the then empty spaces of Berlin’s Funkhaus & MONOM, the hour-long composition – presented here in three variations – feels like an echo and half-forgotten memory of those moments spent in isolation and lethargy. As on Malone’s The Sacrificial Code, the music is again a monumental, texturally and harmonically rich drone that moves in waves, maintaining a dynamic presence despite its languid pace. But where that 2019 release saw the Swedish musician and composer rely solely on pipe organs, on Does Spring Hide Its Joy she turns to sine wave generators. Tuned to her own system, the oscillators allow a wider and finer range of control, from vibrating motifs not far removed from acoustic organs to microtonal scintillations that gesture towards primordial electronic synthesis. One can imagine that both Olivier Messiaen and Iannis Xenakis would admire these expressions that sit equidistant from the organ explorations of the former and the electronic inventiveness of the latter.
While Malone’s compositional touch is what ultimately dictates the shape and flow of the pieces, Railton and O’Malley’s contributions are just as important in building their mesmerising fabric. Although they surface from disparate, experimentally tinged backgrounds – Railton’s roots are in contemporary classical, O’Malley is best known for his drone and metal work – the three musicians play with a shared musical language and ardour. Especially during the opening sequence of ‘Does Spring Hide Its Joy v1’, the reverberations of Malone’s sine waves and O’Malley’s e-bowed guitar are almost indistinguishable from one another as they forge layers of humming sound, then let them drift like blue whales in the gelid waters of the Antarctic. Meanwhile, Railton’s cello circles above them akin to a dancing spider, leaving behind trails of glistening gossamer. Each of these repeated, dynamic fluctuations on the micro level contributes to a whole that shifts so patiently as to almost appear still, reminiscent of tectonic plates moving through aeons.
This heavy meandering takes the music on a journey from plains of brighter, sustained ambient soundscapes to peaky mountains that resemble harsh noise and doom, before ultimately settling into a thrilling interplay of murmuring guitar riffs and quavering electronics. Although sonically similar and composed with the same fundamental elements, each of the remaining two takes carries a distinct impression. ‘v2’ is narrower in its oscillations, but all the more incisive, with zither-like textures and guitar screams that morph into sharp pulses and tinnitus-evoking tones. ‘v3’ radiates with a sense of melancholy and loss, and makes for a fitting final manifestation of what is another triumph for Kali Malone.
