Anything Can Happen: Jennifer Higdon on Contemporary Music
Composer Jennifer Higdon discusses the end of expected boundaries in contemporary music, connecting with an audience, and the difference between academic and commercial works.
Music
1832 posts
Writing on music at The Rumpus!
Swinging Modern Sounds #79: The Rhythm Section Speaks
Maybe there is something important about rock and roll now, rock and roll the neglected past tense of a musical form, and that is that it is the music of adults.
Album of the Week: Tei Shi’s Crawl Space
Tei Shi is Valerie Teicher—born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, raised between Bogota, Colombia, and Vancouver, Canada, she now lives in New York after graduating from Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Her…
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #77: Hauschka
Lion could be a simple homecoming story, the prodigal son returning to the place he was born. Except, the son in question was six when he left. Now, he’s twenty-six…
Sound & Vision: Matt Sullivan
Allyson McCabe talks with Matt Sullivan, founder of Light in the Attic Records, about how he’s preserved the label's commitment to great music while also meeting the demands of a changing, and often challenging, market.
Album of the Week: Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me
Mount Eerie, the musical project of songwriter and producer Phil Elverum, has a new album and it’s a personal and moving journey into the loss of Elverum’s wife, Genevieve. He wrote on…
My Life with Annie Lennox: Nostalgia
I don’t use the term “lifelong hero” frivolously. There are a lot of people I respect and wish to emulate; Annie Lennox, however, is the only “lifelong hero” I’ll ever have. I need her.
Wanted/Needed/Loved: Weyes Blood’s Mysterious Kris
To this day no one really knows where my kris came from or whether or not it’s a significant part of my family history, if it’s a random object or an heirloom with an untold story.
Album of the Week: Jay Som’s Everybody Works
Jay Som is the musical project of San Francisco singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Melina Duterte. The moniker was found via an online baby name generator and means “Victory Moon.” Everybody Works…
Sound Takes: You Want it Darker
There are hard lessons about aging and dying and living on You Want It Darker that we’re not going to ever be done with until we either cure death or forget Leonard Cohen.
Album of the Week: Nadia Reid’s Preservation
“I remember recording the tracks, it was about 11 at night, and I felt almost transcendental, as if I was out of my body, singing these words to myself. That’s…
Swinging Modern Sounds #78: Conceived as a Playlist
Shadowbahn [...] is among the most unusual, and most extreme, in a literary career that has often been marked by its unpredictability.