TJ Elite
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2006
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I listen to nearly all types of music that are out there (and I’m aware of), from black metal to abstract hip hop, ambient to free jazz, baroque to tech trance. There are some genres like blues and county that are virtually absent from my collection, but those are my loss.
That being said, generally only around 5–15% of the music in any genre earns my stamp of approval. Furthermore, genres and people’s fixation on having to categorize and attach a label to everything is often doing more harm than good, I would argue. Music is just music. While fans are great because they motivate artists to keep going and support them monetarily, many of them expect artists to keep producing the same kind of music they have been in the past and not venturing too far outside their own comfort zone. As a result artists are sometimes afraid of alienating their listeners. They aren’t able to pursue true creative freedom and might not even always be consciously aware of it themselves.
Every genre is dealing with its own issues, but jazz and classical are notorious for being often seen as having become quite snobbish and elitist, with the average age of the audience being very high (as anyone who has gone to hear live music will have noted) and the interest of new generations toward them almost nonexistent. Audiences are often looking mostly to the past, with the interest toward contemporary jazz groups and classical composers often being extremely low outside some rare exceptions.
Having said that, in recent years I’ve been seeing some musicians working in these two scenes talking about how they see the walls we ourselves have erected between genres slowly coming down. While it does sound like wishful thinking, I must admit I have seen an increasing trend in that direction. And as more and more people I respect have begun to echo the same sentiment, one can’t help but wonder if there is something to it after all.
Didn’t use to be the biggest fan of Deutsche Grammophon, but I feel like they’ve really been stepping up their game in recent years. Víkingur Ólafsson’s first DG album is dedicated to Philip Glass. It was a blind purchase for me when it came out, but it did not disappoint. He articulates all notes quite clearly. Having listened to some of his other recordings, perhaps a bit too much for my taste at times. But he certainly attempts to gain insight into the pieces he is performing, which I respect and is probably the most important aspect of any performance.
Mahan Esfahani’s “Time Present and Time Past” was virtually made for me. It is pure joy from start to finish. There’s nothing more that even needs to be said.
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