Speaking of Bill Evans, Everybody Digs ... (but in case you are new to jazz, or just new to the world, the paradigmatic tracks are "Peace Piece" and "Some Other Time.") Enjoy!
Monday, January 3, 2011
Music for the Pastor's Study: Part X. Pat Metheny (Group)/Lyle Mays
Perhaps the breathtaking output of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny and his (ever mutating) Group is better suited to a (hypothetical) list like "Music for the Pastor's Car," but a number of individual tracks figure on the 5-Star iTunes playlist that cycles in this pastor's study.
I remember as a high schooler first hearing tracks like "(Cross the) Heartland" and "New Chatauqua" finding their way onto the local rock radio station, before radio was 100% syndicated and local DJs were allowed to play what they liked. Pat Metheny was the local (Kansas City) "boy makes good," playing in jazz clubs when still in high school and eventually cranking out one brilliant album after another. He was blessed to find Lyle Mays early on to complement him on piano. It was a perfect fit. The voicings and progressions in their compositions (both together and separately) are simply unique, and open up indescribable vistas. If they occasionally go off the rails experimentally, well, never mind. The fact is I simply don't know of any more consistently joyful music anywhere.
[Warning: I still don't quite get the sheer noise album, Rejoicing, which title is terribly misleading. Stay far away from that one! Pat, what were you thinking?]
As far as whole albums go, the one most likely to make it all the way through in this pastor's study is an older impressionistic recording of Metheny's quartet, but Watercolors includes some some lovely solo pieces as well.
Some other tracks not to be missed are:
"September Fifteenth," from As Falls Wichita ..., a tribute to the late, great Bill Evans.
"Across the Sky," from Imaginary Day.
"Letter from Home," from the album of the same name.
"Sueno Con Mexico," from New Chatauqua (see my earlier posting on The Organ, and what makes for a great prelude to worship; well, this track too has a similar effect on the respiration.)
"The Search," from American Garage, is the climax on my Metheny playlist, and any pastor with even the slightest sense of being on a spiritual, vocation journey will grasp what this great, capacious midwestern quartet is saying with this simultaneous undulating and soaring chart. Mays' piano here puts me in mind of Vince Guaraldi or George Shearing, and his trademark Oberheim synth patch always sounds to me as care free as my late dad's happy whistling - just the thing to lift one's spirits.
Lyle Mays has had his own distinguished solo career. Check out the evocative and ethereal "Newborn" on Street Dreams.
I remember as a high schooler first hearing tracks like "(Cross the) Heartland" and "New Chatauqua" finding their way onto the local rock radio station, before radio was 100% syndicated and local DJs were allowed to play what they liked. Pat Metheny was the local (Kansas City) "boy makes good," playing in jazz clubs when still in high school and eventually cranking out one brilliant album after another. He was blessed to find Lyle Mays early on to complement him on piano. It was a perfect fit. The voicings and progressions in their compositions (both together and separately) are simply unique, and open up indescribable vistas. If they occasionally go off the rails experimentally, well, never mind. The fact is I simply don't know of any more consistently joyful music anywhere.
[Warning: I still don't quite get the sheer noise album, Rejoicing, which title is terribly misleading. Stay far away from that one! Pat, what were you thinking?]
As far as whole albums go, the one most likely to make it all the way through in this pastor's study is an older impressionistic recording of Metheny's quartet, but Watercolors includes some some lovely solo pieces as well.
Some other tracks not to be missed are:
"September Fifteenth," from As Falls Wichita ..., a tribute to the late, great Bill Evans.
"Across the Sky," from Imaginary Day.
"Letter from Home," from the album of the same name.
"Sueno Con Mexico," from New Chatauqua (see my earlier posting on The Organ, and what makes for a great prelude to worship; well, this track too has a similar effect on the respiration.)
"The Search," from American Garage, is the climax on my Metheny playlist, and any pastor with even the slightest sense of being on a spiritual, vocation journey will grasp what this great, capacious midwestern quartet is saying with this simultaneous undulating and soaring chart. Mays' piano here puts me in mind of Vince Guaraldi or George Shearing, and his trademark Oberheim synth patch always sounds to me as care free as my late dad's happy whistling - just the thing to lift one's spirits.
Lyle Mays has had his own distinguished solo career. Check out the evocative and ethereal "Newborn" on Street Dreams.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Music for the Pastor's Study: Part IX. The Organ
What would the pastor's study be without great organ music? Unfortunately, so many organ CD's aim to represent the entire opus or several opera by a single composer in all its (their) rich variety or to the showcase the performance chops of a great organist. Would that there were more thoroughly contemplative records like this one by Todd Wilson who clearly has a highly developed sense of what is appropriate for worship. I know preachers don't have traveling theme music, and we would appear even more ridiculous if we did, but if every time I preached I could request one of the first half dozen pieces on Disc 1 of In a Quiet Cathedral, I could be quite content with that. Vaughan Williams' Prelude on 'Rhosymedre" in particular is, to my mind, the perfect prelude to worship, bar none. Note the way it breathes and, more importantly, what it does for your own respiration rate. That is the hidden key to a great prelude.
Music for the Pastor's Study: Part VIII. March of the Penguins
I know next to nothing about Alex Wurman, composer of this lovely soundtrack, but his use of black and white musical dyads and couplets is beautifully evocative of both the coloring and the odd gait of the stars of this equally gorgeous film, yet without ever devolving into mere cuteness. I can only think the composer must have drunk deeply from the well of Saint-Saens. Simply the most beautiful movie soundtrack I have heard in a very long time. Having played it over 100 times since I loaded it onto iTunes a couple of months ago, I have not tired of it yet.
Music for the Pastor's Study: Part VII. Bach
To quote a famous fictional Army corporal who served during the Korean war era: "Ah, Bach!"
Music for the Pastor's Study: Part VI. Mozart
Karl Barth was certainly onto something when he kept Mozart spinning on the gramophone, um, you know, "the record player," as he himself spun out the 6 million words of the Church Dogmatics. I cannot imagine trying to concentrate at all, much less analyze deep theological problems while listening to opera, but the symphonies move right along, and when it comes down to sheer productivity, somehow I always seem to get a lot more done than I imagine possible when the symphonies of Mozart are running in the background.
At present I am having fun loading them onto iTunes in numerical order. I am no musicologist, but I do realize there are critical and historical problems with this approach. Nevertheless, I also think it gives one a general sense of how the great composer developed by listening to things in (grossly) chronological order, and in fact, I find this developmental approach to anyone's output, whether musical, theological, sermonic, etc., is almost always the most revealing.
So then, why not start with his so-called "Youth Symphonies"?
At present I am having fun loading them onto iTunes in numerical order. I am no musicologist, but I do realize there are critical and historical problems with this approach. Nevertheless, I also think it gives one a general sense of how the great composer developed by listening to things in (grossly) chronological order, and in fact, I find this developmental approach to anyone's output, whether musical, theological, sermonic, etc., is almost always the most revealing.
So then, why not start with his so-called "Youth Symphonies"?
Music for the Pastor's Study: Part V. Phil Keaggy
The amazing Phil Keaggy has a sweet singing voice that is often compared to that of Paul McCartney. Nevertheless, his vocal albums are not what I would recommend for our purposes here. Once again, the instrumental contributions stand out. Legend has it this diminutive Christian man with only nine working fingers once received a hat tip from Eric Clapton when Johnny Carson asked him what it felt like to be the best guitarist in the world. "You'd have to ask Phil," came the reply.
Music for the Pastor's Study: Part IV. Rick Wakeman
Continuing with the theme of British progressive rock artists who went and grew up, Rick Wakeman's "Airs" trilogy is virtuoso piano at its exquisite best:
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