I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning (Bright Eyes)

It’s You I like (Mr. Rogers)

Horchata (Vampire Weekend)

Lei Pikake (Hapa)

Patience of Angels (Boo Hewerdine)

Flowering Spade (Sean Hayes)

Also-rans include: Billy Bragg, Great Big Sea. Maybe for the next round.

I will be honest with you: I do not know very much about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music. There is a good reason for this: about thirteen years ago (!) one of the guys I work with hooked me up with the album “The Last Prophet” from Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records label, and this is the only album I’ve ever really listened to by him. In fact, I have not yet gotten to the second track of the album. For the last thirteen years I have been listening to the same track of the same album, over and over, and I still feel that I have not reached the bottom of it.

It’s not counterpoint or a Bach fugue and it doesn’t feature a full orchestra so I suppose at some level the music is not all that ‘complex’, but the tracks is seventeen minutes long and, let’s face it, it combines the best parts of the late Coltrane with Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria, which is not something everyone can say. We get the theme immediately, and variations are pyrotechnic, they climax, and then the piece winds down. There is a lot to say about Khan’s incredible vocal technique — as there is about the guy in the ensemble with the slightly higher voice — but it’s the mixture of intelligence and ecstasy in equal intensity (something that rarely happens) that I find so amazing. And that is just the individual singers. The ensemble work is equally insanely powerful. It’s ecstasy without simplicity, complexity without intellectualism: a genuine, overwhelming craftsmanship of the soul.

Now, In opposition to the ubiquitous refrain today that people are ‘spiritual but not religious’ I often insist that I am ‘religious but not spiritual’, and I firmly resist the idea that the Christian music I sing is acultural (if it was you wouldn’t have to be a liturgy junky to get it). Still, I have to admit that this music has a power to it that is undeniable. Is it the piety of the performers or something deeper? I’m not sure — like I said, the only thing I’ve heard is the first track — but there is no doubt in my mind that if these were ‘boy meet girl’ or ‘baby I want you’ lyrics the piece would never have the obvious power it has for both performers and listeners.

I’ve taken a quick look around — most online music stores will sell you the whole album for ten bucks but not the first track. If you have 10 bucks and 15 years of your life free, I’d really urge you to pick the album up. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

The string quartet is on “this album”:http://www.emusic.com/album/Aaron-Jay-Kernis-Kernis-Symphony-In-Waves-MP3-Download/10953497.html.

Just put it on in the car or your office. You won’t be sorry.

I choose to show the Hahn performance for the rather poor reason that it was top hit in most of the search engines I tried for various combinations of ‘Sibelius concerto violin’. I had some vague sense that she was some physically striking prodigy who put out albums of Standard Romantic Showpieces With Covers Depicting Physically Striking Young Women Clutching Violins To Their Barely Concealed Chests which has become sort of a thing as major classical labels desperately try to get people to keep listening to their albums.

As it turns out, in fact, Hahn is a fascinating and articulate person who has been keeping an online journal since the late 90s and has “blog entries going back to 2002″:http://www.hilaryhahn.com/journal.shtml. She posts regularly, has “short pieces”:http://www.hilaryhahn.com/ittybitty.shtml, “a youtube channel”:http://www.youtube.com/hilaryhahnvideos, “twitter alerts”:http://twitter.co/violincase, and all manner of other things.

Frankly, I’m not a big fan of twitter and don’t watch that much youtube — but thanks for the channel Hilary, 60 people who never heard that Sibelius now have had a taste — but I have to really give it up for the blog entry and another recent, longer “thoughtful piece on crossing musical genres”:http://www.artsjournal.com/npac/2008/05/new-avenues-in-collaboration.html. Its great to see an artist be so thoughtful in public about what they do. I was really impressed.

The SEB and I are on a spree of judeo-baroque listening recently, including Salomone Rossi, Fretwork, Quire of Voyces (look past the spelling to the singing), and Phillippe Jaroussky. This hereby replaces our earlier Ravel/Milhaud/Poulenc Chamber Music mix. I’ve also been revisiting Tsunami.

Jaroussky seems to have set his sites on Vivaldi as Scholl did on Handel.

Some relevant links:
“Ad Vitam Records”:http://www.advitam-records.com/gb/index.php – choral music to unite monotheists
“Brilliant Records”:http://music.brilliantclassics.com/ – like Naxos, but with more hardcore liner notes.
“Jaroussky in the obligatory Nisi Dominus showcase”:http://youtube.com/watch?v=VHJYNYi5N7o — check out how little he moves (physically) as he moves his voice through his crescendos. Damn.

I approached it with an open mind. Honestly.