Emerging Canadian artist bludnymph continues to showcase her rap-infused dark-pop sound with a new single. The song is called “Lights Out”; it arrived together with a riveting visual. Directed by Kathryn Jankowski, that video looks and feels spooky.
“I like to get out my evil, darker side with my music – I channel it so I can keep being nice & not get angry at people,” says bludnymph. “It’s nice to be mean & aggressive in my music as an outlet so I can work on setting boundaries better in my personal life.”
Catchy and energetic, the song oozes sweet fury. The singer-songwriter’s writing and performance are nothing short of sterling.
Listen/watch “Lights Out” and follow bludnymph on Instagram.
When Daniel Barenboim arrived as Generalmusikdirector of Berlin’s State Opera 30 years ago both he and the company were looking a bit shabby. The opera house on Unter den Linden was struggling to recover from an insidious East German mentality and Barenboim was still reeling from being sacked in Paris as music director of the Bastille Opera before it even opened.
Conductor and opera comany felt an affinity of grievance and an ambition to improve. Barenboim had an away job as music director of the Chicago Symphony. He also knew that a segment of the Berlin Philharmonic would want him to succeed Claudio Abbado. When Abbado resigned in 1998 and the players chose Simon Rattle over Barenboim, he showed no resentment. On the contrary, he carried on conducting the Philharmonic in non-Rattle repertoire and formed a wacky friendship with the British conductor.
The mature Barenboim had larger plans. He made the Staatsoper Berlin’s #1 opera house, outshining the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin, and raised support locally for the Said Barenboim Akademie that he saw as a lasting legacy to music education and Middle East harmony.
Other conductors came and went – Thielemann, Ivan Fischer, Kirill Petrenko, Nagano, Sokhiev, Runnicles, to name a few – but Barenboim has been the fulcrum of musical life fo three decades in the reunited German capital, the one who could call up the Chancellor and get what he wanted. If his management style was at times autocratic, people knew where they stood with Barenboim. There was no duplicity, no intrigue.
His departure is epochal. When we look back on this era in times to come, it will be evident that Barenboim, more than anyone, made Berlin the music capital of the world.
New Delhi [India], January 6 (ANI): The ‘Mozart of Madras’ celebrates his 56th birthday today. Known for bringing a revolution to the music of Indian cinema with his unique composition style, A.R. Rahman has indeed shown the way forward to the Indian film soundscape.
In his illustrious career spanning over 3 decades now, the legendary Tamil music composer has not only created memorable hits in Indian films but has also made his mark on world music with a number of his international projects appearing in Hollywood, Chinese and Middle-Eastern cinema as well. As our beloved musical genius rings in his big day, let us take a look at some of his most interesting musical masterpieces for international projects, which exemplify his prowess as a world musician.
JAI HO This lively and upbeat musical number from the British film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was an Indo-Hispanic fusion anthem with a global spirit. The song, which won Rahman an Oscar and a Grammy Award, featured the soaring vocals of singers Sukhwinder Singh, Vijay Prakash and Mahalakshmi Iyer, along with a Spanish portion performed Tanvi Shah.
WARRIORS IN PEACEThis harmonic and orchestral piece was composed by Rahman for the Chinese film ‘Warriors of Heaven and Earth’. Sung originally by the ‘Queen of C-Pop’ Jolin Tsai in Mandarin, the song also has an English version sung by Tamil singer Sunitha Sarathy, and a Hindi version by Bollywood playback singer Sadhana Sargam. The mellow yet intense tune showcases Rahman’s ability to transcend borders and languages with his music.
MY MIND IS A STRANGER WITHOUT YOUThis bilingual romantic duet from the American film ‘The Hundred-Foot Journey’ shows the effortless ability of Rahman to fuse various musical cultures. This acoustic guitar and piano-heavy track features the Academy Award-winning composer singing in Hindi with perfectly complementing vocals by opera singer Solange Merdinian in French.
IF I RISEA duet with pop singer Dido, this number from the Hollywood flick ‘127 Hours’ evokes feelings of peace and motivation in its lyrics and sound. Featuring the duo crooning over a soft, slow-tempo instrumentation with a children’s choir at the end, the song is a brilliant example of Rahman’s ability to combine various elements to make a single musical masterpiece.
WE COULD BE KINGSThis bright and peppy number from the Disney film ‘Million Dollar Arm’ features Rahman singing complex Indian sargams accompanied by Scottish singer KT Tunstall to create a song that can best be described as a ‘desi twist’ to a pop melody. (ANI)
Moby has announced that he will release a new two-and-a-half-hour ambient album on New Year’s Day.
The producer will start 2023 by sharing the lengthy new record, titled ‘ambient23’, which was, he revealed, made “almost exclusively made with weird old drum machines and old synths.”
Over the last few months, Moby has shared a number of posts detailing his process in creating the album and sharing updates on its progress with fans.
Last week, he wrote on Instagram: I’m finishing a new ambient album, to be released on January 1, 2023. It’s called ‘ambient 23’ for obvious and oddball reasons (23 is an interesting number).
“It’s a bit different than some of my more recent Ambient records because it’s almost exclusively made with weird old drum machines and old synths like the ones pictured here… of course inspired by my early ambient heros…”
See the posts below.
Most recently, Moby released a new album titled ‘Reprise’ in 2021, made up of reworkings of hits from his back catalogue.
‘Reprise’ saw the dance artist team up with the Budapest Art Orchestra and a host of guest artists including Kris Kristofferson, Mark Lanegan, Gregory Porter and Skylar Grey.
“Sorry if this seems self-evident, but for me the main purpose of music is to communicate emotion,” Moby said. “To share some aspect of the human condition with whoever might be listening. I long for the simplicity and vulnerability you can get with acoustic or classical music.”
Reviewing ‘Reprise’, NME said: “Overall, ‘Reprise’ is full of dignified reworkings that don’t offer too many surprises, which – given he’s still weathering the backlash that greeted his 2019 memoir Then It Fell Apart – is perhaps the point.”
Popular music festival Nest Fest, scheduled to be held in Hastings later this month, has been cancelled after several artists pulled out.
Organisers shared the news on social media on Thursday night and stated all tickets will be refunded for the festival.
It was scheduled to be held on Saturday January 14 at Tomoana Hawke’s Bay Showgrounds.
“Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons and circumstances out of our control (family, injury and health) we have had four of our family artist members pull out of Nest Fest at the last minute,” the post read.
“This includes Action Bronson, Pond, Methyl Ethel and DeWalta.”
Organisers explained that they had looked for replacement acts “which has proven near impossible this late into the game”.
“[It] would leave us delivering a show we feel doesn’t represent Nest Fest or what we have sold to you – our fans.
“We are gutted by this and have decided to cancel Nest Fest 2023 and to refund all current ticket holders.”
Another major music festival, Juicy Fest, was held on Thursday in Napier featuring artists such as American rapper Nelly.
Fortunately, the wet weather held out for most of that show in front of about 9000 fans.
Celebrated American composer (and Massachusetts native) Leonard Bernstein once said, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” Anyone who has pulled an “all-nighter” in college, studying for a test or writing that paper to make deadline, is smiling knowingly at the Bernstein quote. And at the start of a new year, it’s amazing to see that when I ask people, “What do you hope the new year will bring you?” the answer is usually “more time.”
But that’s not something new. Wanting more time to do the things we need and want to do likely goes back to the dawn of humankind. Composers have also been concerned with time since, well, the beginning of musical time. To a musician, time can have a couple of different meanings, from how a time signature indicates the number of beats in a measure and the note value that gets one beat, to the length of a piece.
When I sang in the Boston College Chorale, “coming in on time” was an often-stated phrase by our conductor. And getting to a gig to help with equipment load-in is important because the show can’t begin without everyone and everything being there “on time.”
In the spirit of the New Year’s “more time” wishes, here are some musical pieces about Time, in, if I may, chronological order.
English Renaissance composer John Dowland wrote “Time Stands Still” for his Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires in 1603. Dowland wants to assure us of the timelessness of beauty and love: “All other things shall change but she remains the same.” This version with soprano Michal Bitan and lutenist Earl Christy shows the lyrics.
Some have speculated that Dowland wrote this piece about Queen Elizabeth I. As she aged, and even after her death, writers, painters and musicians of the period portrayed her as perfection and timeless.
An oratorio by Handel takes . . . some time . . . to explain the passage of time. It all started in 1707 when Handel wrote his first oratorio, based on an Italian libretto by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili. The original title was The Triumph of Time and Disillusion, HWV 46a. It took another 30 years, but Handel reworked the piece and retitled it, The Triumph of Time and Truth, HWV 46b. But wait – there’s more! Time marched on, and in 1757 the piece was translated into English and reworked, mostly by Handel’s last librettist, Thomas Morell, although this time it kept its second title and later given the catalog number HWV 71.
The basic story is that the characters Time and Counsel (Truth) confront the characters Pleasure and Deceit in a fight for the soul of Beauty. The oratorio opens with Beauty staring into her mirror, wishing to stall Time. Although Pleasure and Deceit make a persuasive case, in the end, Beauty understands Truth’s warning that youth won’t last forever.
I’ve always loved the aria “Guardian Angels, oh, protect me” and this is a lovely version with soprano Danielle de Niese and The English Concert conducted by Harry Bicket.
It’s interesting to me that from inception to final version, Handel took 50 years to complete the musical journey. By the time he was working on the final version, he was battling poor eyesight and age-related poor health. He wanted to flesh out the character of Deceit more, but instead of adding brand new arias and choruses, he borrowed musical themes from some of his other works.
So where did the concept of “time” come from? Historians point to measurement of time as an important mark of progress, and in particular, the ancient Egyptians and their invention of the sundial. Then there’s the Hebrew Bible, or the Christian Old Testament, taking on the question in the first chapter, Genesis: “In the beginning,” and painting a picture of God creating the world in six days.
In 1795, Joseph Haydn was looking for a subject for a large oratorio. The story goes that when he was traveling in England, he was handed a poem called The Creation of the World, by an unknown author. When he got back to Vienna, Haydn began his preparation of a musical setting by giving the lengthy piece to librettist Gottfried van Swieten, who added to it a variety of Bible quotes, including some from the English King James Version. When the piece was premiered in 1798 it ran for almost two hours. “In the interest of time,” here is just the Prelude, “The Representation of Chaos,” with conductor Christopher Hogwood leading The Academy of Ancient Music.
Haydn did consider The Creation to be his greatest masterpiece, and it received acclaim and performances at least 40 times during his lifetime. (You can hear a complete performance of The Creation by the Handel and Haydn Society, led by Harry Christophers in his last concert as Artistic Director, on demand.)
One of Haydn’s students also tried to compose a work about “time” in 1812. The second movement, Allegretto scherzando, from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 sounds like a clock keeping time. There seems to be a debate about whether Beethoven was imitating another time-related instrument, a metronome, or whether he might have been paying homage to Haydn’s Symphony No. 101, “The Clock.” Whatever the true inspiration, you get the time-keeping idea as soon as you start listening. Here’s Claudio Abbado conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.
In November of 2022, in a post entitled “Classical Music Responds to the Times,” I told the story of French composer Olivier Messiaen, who wrote Quartet for the End of Time while in a German prisoner of war camp in 1941. The instruments he used in the piece were for what was available at the camp. Messiaen wrote that the Book of Revelation (King James Version) inspired the work: “And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever … that there should be time no longer.” The Playground Ensemble plays the second movement, the Vocalise, depicting the Angel.
Although the subject and the mood are dark, this is one of Messiaen’s finest works.
In 1945, Sergei Prokofiev took a different approach towards time when he wrote the ballet Cinderella, Op. 87, based on the old fairy tale. In two instances, time is a major factor in the story. The first instance is familiar to all who know the tale: Cinderella had been warned by her Fairy Godmother that even though she is at the Royal Ball, she must keep an eye on the clock, for when it strikes midnight the spell will break, and she will be returned to rags. You can hear the confusion and desperation at the stroke of twelve. The Cleveland Orchestra is conducted here by Vladimir Ashkenazy.
Prokofiev tackled the passage of time in Act 3. The Prince travels the world by bending space and time in order to find his beautiful Princess. Although he is seen trying on the glass slipper on young women from Europe to Asia, the time travel turns out to be something he accomplishes by magic. The audience realizes that from Cinderella’s perspective, it is only the next day when the Prince arrives at her family’s home to see if there are any local maidens who fit the slipper. Here is “The Morning After the Ball,” complete with the “march of time,” with André Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.
Another piece from 1945 takes a very lighthearted approach to time. American composer Leroy Anderson was in the U.S. Army at the time, assigned to the Scandinavian Desk of Military Intelligence in Washington. Arthur Fiedler invited him to guest conduct the Boston Pops during the upcoming annual Harvard Night. Anderson wrote “Syncopated Clock” in just a few hours and mailed it off to Fiedler, who in turn, had the orchestra parts copied from the score. Anderson traveled to Boston on a 3-day leave and conducted the piece, which became an instant hit. Here’s the recording with Arthur Fiedler and the Pops, released in 1951.
There have been many other orchestras who recorded the piece, but the Boston Pops version stayed on the charts for two weeks, climbing to 28!
Motivational speaker Stephen Covey’s most often quoted line is “Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important,” a good line upon which to reflect as the new year launches. And here’s another: “6:30 is the best time, hands down!” Happy New Year!
CODA: One of the most talked about “time pieces” was written by American composer John Cage in 1947-48. Cage said that “4’33” (spoken as “4-33,” or “4 Minutes 33-Seconds”), embodied his idea that any auditory experience constituted music. Here’s a performance by William Marx. See if you understand what Cage meant.
Fusing the colourfully galvanizing zeal of Afro Beats with the grit and soul of old-school hip-hop, the French-Canadian artist, PongoFromTheS pumped plenty of energy into the standout single, Boeing, from his 2022 album, AIP (Alone in Public).
The versatile 12-track release is a testament to how far he’s come since launching his debut single in 2015. Along the way, he’s collaborated with internationally renowned artists and producers; on the basis of the party-rocking but lyrically-rounded single, Boeing, it is only a matter of time before he’s as accoladed as the likes of Zaytoven and Denzl. You’d be seriously hard-pressed to find another urban underground artist who pours as much innovation into their layered instrumentals that become an euphorically complex platform for his charisma-driven bars.
A Grammy-winning recording engineer who has worked in the Nashville music scene for 35 years, Mark Capps, was shot and killed by police in Nashville Thursday afternoon. A spokesperson said he was killed by a SWAT team member after he brandished a gun in his doorway, as police responded to an incident in which Capps had allegedly held his wife and adult stepdaughter captive at gunpoint.
Multiple news outlets in Nashville reported the death, which sent shock waves through parts of the local music community. He was part of a family that is well-known in Nashville circles, as his father was legendary session player, Grand Ole Opry guitarist and Musicians Hall of Fame member Jimmy Capps, who died in 2020. The fatal shooting of Capps comes just two days after his brother died, as indicated on his social media.
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Capps, 54, was wanted on aggravated assault and aggravated kidnapping warrants at the time of his death. Metro Police spokesman Don Aaron told reporters that Capps brought his 60-year-old wife and 23-year-old stepdaughter into their family room at gunpoint at approximately 3 a.m. and “told them if they called someone, he would kill them. They were extremely frightened by him and his actions toward them in not letting them leave.” After he fell asleep around dawn, police said, the two women escaped and went to the Hermitage precinct to file a report. The SWAT team confronted and killed him shortly after the warrants were issued at 1:55 p.m.
A discography on Capps’ website indicates that, since 1987, he has worked with country and gospel artists including Alabama, the Dixie Chicks, Neil Diamond, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Brooks & Dunn, Barry Manilow, Chris Young, Aaron Tippin, Conway Twitty, Joe Diffie, the Oak Ridge Boys, Big & Rich, the Gaither Vocal Band, John Michael Montgomery, Kenny Rogers, Donna Summer, the Mavericks, Anita Cochran, Kenny Loggins, Olivia Newton-John and the Isaacs, among others.
The Recording Academy’s website shows he picked up a Grammy for best polka album four years in a row, from 2005 through 2008, working with the group Jimmy Sturr & His Orchestra.
“Just after the arrest warrants were issued, SWAT was preparing in the event he barricaded himself inside,” Aaron told reporters, per News Channel 5. “He came to the door with a gun in hand. At that point, he was fatally shot. We have since learned there were cameras monitoring the outside of the home. He may have well seen them outside the residence. They were in SWAT gear and clearly marked to him as members of the police department.”
Police said that body cam footage was being reviewed and would be released later.
Capps had just lost his brother two days prior to the incident that resulted in his own death. In Capps’ last public Facebook post, dated yesterday, he wrote, “No words. RIP Jeffery Allen Capps, Dec 31, 1967 – Jan 03, 2023,” alongside an undated photograph of himself and his brother standing in front of their father’s grave.
Mark Capps’ final Facebook post, posted the day before he was shot to death by a Nashville SWAT team member.
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What to write about someone about whom everything has been already written? What to explore new about a person whose career has been discussed, factoring in every minuscule detail? What to do when all the unknown facts about him have become common knowledge? What else can you say about AR Rahman, what’s not been already said? Turns out there’s a lot. The taciturn era-defining musician has been silently giving back to society, and on his 56th birthday, we unraveled some new dimensions in a conversation with Vishal Chandrashekhar, composer of brilliant albums like Sita Ramam and Jil Jung Jak, who also happens to be a student of AR Rahman’s KM Music Conservatory.
Composer Vishal Chandrashekar.
Vishal Chandrashekhar was part of the pilot batch of the conservatory, which was founded in 2008. Even before becoming a student of AR Rahman, Vishal had been composing songs, but he joined the one-year course to further his understanding of music. “AR Rahman was my principal. He provided a great environment and faculty for us to flourish… in terms of music theory and all that. KM is a kind of place where you find students with varying degrees of strengths. Though I had been composing music, my stint as a student there helped me become more refined.”
One of the high points of his life is when he presented his research work to Rahman, says Vishal. “This was after I graduated from KM. As I was working on my research work, I realised how brilliantly Rahman had structured the course because it came in handy for what I was doing. So, when I mailed him explaining what I had done at 11.50 pm, he replied saying ‘it’s good’ at 11.55 pm… within five minutes. More than anything his gesture stood out because all of this is his way of giving back to society.” Vishal fondly cherishes that reply even now.
When asked to elaborate on how the conservatory is AR Rahman’s way of ‘giving back to society, Vishal Chandrashekhar says, “See, it is something not anyone can imagine doing. For example, I am recording with a lot of violin players. And all of them are above the age of 45. As musicians, we have realized that the new generation of string players is slowly vanishing. What he is doing with KM is that he is bringing in a lot of underprivileged students with a good musical sense and teaching them for free. Not many people know. I know because I was there.”
He adds, “We won’t feel the impact of all of this now. But down the line say after ten years… we will realise it. He is creating an orchestra that can give a fight to international ones like any Macedonian or Budapest orchestra. I had the experience of recording in Budapest and in Chennai for Sita Ramam. There’s a huge difference in the understanding of music between us and them. Rahman is bridging that gap by creating new talents who are well-adapted not just to Indian music but to Western music too. He has already created so many opportunities for musicians here, and after a decade, you can see a lot more of what he has been doing all these years.”
While signing off, Vishal says, “We say Ilaiyaraaja and AR Rahman are all like a vast sea, but after my research work and working experience, they are like the ocean. There is so much more to their music than we know.”
