[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 63: Early Choral Music Special V

My newest episode of Getting Warmer on NTS Radio is the fifth installment in the annual Early Choral Music special. Entirely acappella and sacred, with a little bit more of a Spanish focus this year. I’ve listed the performers as the artist, and then the composers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm, and happy holidays!

Previous early choral music specials: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018

Tracklist:
1. Sequentia – O Pastor animarum (Hildegard von Bingen)
2. Tonus Peregrinus – Missa Da gaudiorum premia: Sanctus (John Dunstable)
3. La Capella Reial de Catalunya – Sibil·la Valenciana: Gloria Tibi Domine (Bartomeu Càrceres)
4. The Cambridge Singers – Justorum animae (Orlando de Lassus)
5. Anonymous 4 – Ave Maria gracia plena (Anonymous, 13th century France)
6. The Tallis Scholars – Funeral Motet: Versa est in luctum (Tomás Luis de Victoria)
7. Discantus – O rubor sanguinis [Antienne] (Hildegard von Bingen)
8. A Sei Voci – Messe Vidi Turbam Magnam: Graduel [Exaltent Eum] (Gregorio Allegri)
9. The Tallis Scholars – Osculetur me (Orlando de Lassus)
10. Capilla Flamenca – De profundis (Sebastián de Vivanco)
11. Ensemble Project Ars Nova – O gloriosissimi lux (Hildegard von Bingen)
12. The Tallis Scholars – Missa Papae Marcelli: Kyrie (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)
13. Anonymous 4 – Codex Calixtinus: Portum in ultimo (Anonymous, 12th century France)
14. Capilla Flamenca – Quae est ista (Sebastián de Vivanco)
15. The Tallis Scholars – Motet: Sicut lilium inter spinas (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)
16. Discantus – Ave rosa novella (Anonymous, 13th century France)
17. Pro Cantione Antiqua – Missa Aeterna Christi munera: Kyrie (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 62

My latest mix for NTS Radio is a chilly, moody descent into winter: minimalist avant-garde, icy synths, a David Sylvian sandwich, echoey whistles, and another surprise Bono cameo. I hope you like it–and if you do, you can download an mp3 version here.

Tracklist:
1. David Sylvian – Preparations For A Journey
2. Dory Previn – Mama Mama Comfort Me
3. Muslimgauze – Sapere Aude
4. Viola Renea – Chariot of Palace
5. Mabe Fratti ft. Claire Rousay – Hacia el Vacío
6. Edson Natale – Nina Maika
7. Lucille Starr – Wooden Heart
8. Larry Chernicoff – Woodstock, New York
9. Svitlana Nianio & Alexander Yurchencko – Prologue
10. Unknown Artist – Siciliana (comp. Ottorino Respighi)
11. Daniel Lentz – Midnight White
12. Uakti – Montanha
13. John Cale – Please
14. Chas Smith – October ’68
15. Osnabrücker Jugendchor – Tibi Soli (comp. Gregorio Allegri)
16. Passengers – A Different Kind of Blue / Beach Sequence
17. David Sylvian – Silver Moon Over Sleeping Steeples

Virginia Astley – From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, 1983

Convenient that I realized that I hadn’t yet posted Virginia Astley’s debut full-length, From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, on Easter Sunday, of all days (though I did share her very important Hope in a Darkened Heart a few years back). While From Gardens is a squarely summer record–suggesting from all angles the soporific heat of peak July–it is about as pastoral as music can possibly be, which means it’s a record that I start reaching for at the first signs of spring. Alongside Claire Hamill’s Voices, it paints a picture of a heavily romanticized ideal of the British countryside, refracted through childhood memories and the heavy lethargy of summer. Both the album title and the track title for “Out On The Lawn I Lie in Bed” are taken from W.H. Auden’s 1933 poem “A Summer Night,” and fittingly From Gardens recreates the experience of a summer day in its entirety in chronological sequence, with the A side titled “Morning” and the B side “Afternoon.”

It’s languorous, unhurried, and arguably a true ambient record in how well-suited it is as background music, something which Astley herself pointed out in a radio interview: “Whoever’s listening could lie down and put it on, and not really listen to it that much. Just have it on in the background.” Songs aren’t structured like songs so much as curiosity-driven variations on motifs–it’s easy to imagine Astley arriving at a piano refrain that she found particularly pretty, and playing with it until organically arriving at the next “song”–all of which flow seamlessly into one another uninterrupted, just like the experience of a particularly hot day.

More specifically, in addition to being a true ambient record, it’s a freak outlier in how nakedly beautiful and fully realized it is, especially for its time. As Simon Reynolds details here, there was no culture for music like this in 1983. Britain was in the thralls of post-punk and post-post-punk, with sounds going in thousands of different and gritty directions but certainly not backwards, and it’s easy to imagine detractors calling From Gardens just that–regressive, anti-avant-garde. There was something very brave about structuring an entire record around nostalgia and what is very legibly a deep love for bucolic Britain, referencing romanticism and Auden and a lifestyle that it’s difficult for me to imagine as anything other than aristocratic. Yet while Astley was classically trained, From Gardens was clearly informed by a vision that was very novel and fully her own: her  personal field recordings made in the village of Moulsford-on-Thames, spun together with luminous piano, flute, and xylophone melodies, with small and elegant hints of electronic manipulation: church bells that chime forever, glitchy manipulation in “When The Fields Were On Fire,” the looping sound of a creaky swing swing gate* forming a pseudo-percussive backbone in “Out On the Lawn I Lie In Bed.” Astley is honest in her nostalgia for something which no longer exists, and she knowingly depicts it in an overly-perfect, hyperreal way that suggests it may have actually never existed at all. But it’s all hers, from start to finish: Astley wrote, recorded, and co-produced From Gardens herself, but moreover she saw the gardens, remembered them, and reimagined them in a way that no one else could. Happy spring–I hope you enjoy.

*I incorrectly heard that sample as a swing, but since Astley very considerately labeled and time/location-stamped all her samples, I’m happy to report that it’s a gate!

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[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 52: Yoko Kanno Special

My newest mix for NTS Radio is an hourlong Yoko Kanno special. If you’re unfamiliar, Kanno is a Japanese composer, arranger, and musician. best known for her extensive work soundtracking anime films and series, though she’s also scored a number of video games and live-action films. Some of her noteworthy anime scores include Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Cowboy Bebop, Macross Plus, Turn A Gundam, The Vision of Escaflowne, Darker than Black, Wolf’s Rain, and Terror in Resonance. My entrypoint to her work, as I suspect is the case for many, was the terrific theme for the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series, “Inner Universe,” which is sung in Russian, English, and Latin by Japanese-Russian singer Origa, who is a regular collaborator of Kanno’s. Since then it’s been a joy to dig through her enormous discography, so I’ve compiled a few of my favorite moments here, ranging from opiated trip hop and jazz to sweeping cinematic modern classical to devastating choral pieces and churning dystopic breakbeat. I hope you like it! You can download an mp3 version here.

Tracklist:
1. Yoko Kanno – Blue Tone
2. Yoko Kanno – Stamina Rose
3. Yoko Kanno – Pulse
4. Yoko Kanno – 縮緬エアー
5. Yoko Kanno – Chorale
6. Yoko Kanno – Go DA DA
7. Yoko Kanno – She Is
8. Yoko Kanno – Some Other Time
9. Yoko Kanno – Bang Bang Banquet
10. Yoko Kanno – Aqua
11. Yoko Kanno – Orphan
12. Yoko Kanno – On The Earth
13. Yoko Kanno – A Sai En
14. Yoko Kanno – This EDEN
15. Yoko Kanno – Ephemera
16. Yoko Kanno – Bells For Her
17. Yoko Kanno – The Clone
18. Yoko Kanno – Torch Song
19. Yoko Kanno – Siberian Doll House
20. Yoko Kanno – Inner Universe

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 51: Early Choral Music Special IV

My newest episode of Getting Warmer on NTS Radio is the fourth installment in the annual Early Choral Music special. Entirely acappella and mostly sacred, though I got a little wild and threw in a secular song from 16th century England. Also, to keep it extra spicy there’s some Hungarian and Bulgarian stuff in here too! I’ve listed the performers as the artist, and then the composers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too–if you do, you can download an mp3 version of it here. Stay warm!

Previous early choral music specials: 2020, 2019, 2018

Tracklist:
1. Sequentia – Kyrieleison (Hildegard von Bingen)
2. The Tallis Scholars – Qui venit (John Taverner)
3. Sequentia – Ora pro nobis, beate Nicolae (Anonymous, France)
4. Anonymous 4 – Motet: Puellare gremium / Purissima mater (Unknown composer, England)
5. Huelgas-Ensemble – Virgo sub ethereis (Alexander Agricola)
6. Anonymous 4 – Pia mater gratie (Anonymous, France)
7. Huelgas-Ensemble – Fortuna desperata (Alexander Agricola)
8. Sequentia – O Dulcis Electe (Responsory/To St. John The Evangelist) (Hildegard von Bingen)
9. Osnabrücker Jugendchor – Miserere mei, Deus (excerpt) (Gregorio Allegri)
10. Theatre of Voices – Ve Mundo (Philip The Chancellor)
11. Anonymous 4 – Novum Decus Oritur (Unknown, Hungary)
12. Tonus Peregrinus – Quam Pulchra Est (John Dunstable)
13. The Tallis Scholars – Requiem: Taedet Animam Meam (Tomás Luis de Victoria)
14. Taverner Choir & Players – Westron Wynde (Anonymous, England)
15. Discantus – Vox in Rama (Unknown, France)
16. Tonus Peregrinus – Sanctus (John Dunstable)
17. Chamber Music Ensemble Kukuzel – Bulgarian Lament (excerpt) (Ioan Kukusel)
18. The Tallis Scholars – Dona nobis pacem (John Taverner)
19. Westminster Cathedral Choir – Sanctus (Missa Cantate) (John Sheppard)

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 48

Here’s my most recent episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio–pleased to realize that it’s my 48th episode, meaning that this show recently turned four years old. Sharing this show has, in all sincerity, been one of the most rewarding and pleasurable things I’ve ever done, so I’m grateful to all who have listened.

As I was putting this mix together I was thinking about the million people we’ve lost to COVID-19, a fifth of whom were Americans. Many of them died alone, with no family or friends present, and many of them still haven’t yet been given funerals because of travel or safety restrictions. Here in America, there has been no national mourning, reckoning, or even acknowledgment of what we’ve lost. Our president trivializes the disease and its impacts, and he belittles and dismisses the 210,000 lives we’ve lost to it, every day. It feels incredibly difficult to move through collective grief when our leadership has not only learned nothing from its mistakes but is actively denying that mistakes were ever made or are still being made.

This is my dedication to those who’ve died and to those who loved them: music that, to me, feels otherworldly, reverent, and resonant with the gravity of loss. It’s mostly Russian choral music, which I love for its dark, watery awe, though it there are also a few moments of Japanese medieval futurism. It also includes two of my favorite choral pieces, Rachmaninoff’s “Bogoroditse Devo” from his All-Night Vigil and a choral adaptation of Bach’s “Komm Süsser Tod.” I hope you enjoy it–you can download an mp3 version here. Sending love, and thanks as always for being here 💙

Tracklist:
1. Yoko Kanno – Aqua (Cello Version)
2. The USSR Ministry Of Culture Chamber Choir – Hymn Of The Cherubim (Excerpt) (Comp. Tchaikovsky)
3. Osnabrücker Jugendchor – Amplius (Comp. Gregorio Allegri)
4. This Mortal Coil – Song To The Siren
5. MDR Rundfunkchor – Bogoroditse Devo (All-Night Vigil, Op. 37 “Vespers”) (Comp. Rachmaninoff)
6. Erik Westberg Vocal Ensemble – Komm Süsser Tod (Come, Sweet Death) (Comp. Bach)
7. Yoko Kanno – Aqua
8. St. Petersburg Chamber Choir – Chorale (Comp. Josef Ketchakhmadze)
9. Bulgarian State Radio & Television Mixed Choir – I Have Chosen The Blissful (Comp. Alexander Gretchaninov)
10. Geinoh Yamashirogumi – Falling As Flowers Do – Dying A Glorious Death
11. Choir of King’s College – Nyne Otpushchayeshi (Nunc Dimittis) (All-Night Vigil, Op. 37 “Vespers”) (Comp. Rachmaninoff)
12. St. Petersburg Chamber Choir – Alleluia, Behold The Bridegroom (Anonymous)
13. The Cambridge Singers – Libera Nos, Salva Nos (Comp. John Sheppard)
14. Unknown – Russian Cathedral Bells

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 45: Gospel Special

Here’s yesterday’s episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio, which is an hour of some of my favorite gospel. Though I’m far from an expert, I love that gospel music can mean a lot of different things to different people, regardless of whether or not you’re religious. It’s functioned as a means of protest, solidarity, expressing joy, devotion, and as a way of sharing collective grief. Hopefully you’ll find something in it that is helpful to you right now. There’s an mp3 version you can download here if you’d like it. Sending love.

Tracklist:
1. The Staple Singers – So Soon
2. The Fairfield Four – Hallelujah
3. Pastor T.L. Barrett – After The Rain
4. The Swanee Quintet – It’s Hard To Get Along
5. Dorothy Love Coates & The Original Gospel Harmonettes – Sometime
6. The Angelic Choir – Wade In The Water
7. The ARC Gospel Choir – Jesus Wash
8. Aretha Franklin & The Southern California Community Choir – Precious Lord (Take My Hand) / You’ve Got A Friend
9. The Consolers – Children Keep On Marching
10. John Davis & The Georgia Sea Island Singers – Moses, Don’t Get Lost
11. Sweet Honey In The Rock – Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around
12. The Mississippi Children’s Choir – His Eye Is On The Sparrow
13. Sam Cooke & The Soul Stirrers – How Far Am I Canaan
14. Reverend Morgan Babb – Wonder How Long
15. Edna Gallmon Cooke – At The Gate
16. The ARC Gospel Choir – When We All
17. The Joubert Singers – Stand On The Word

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 40: Early Choral Music Special III

This month for NTS Radio I put together a third volume of early Western vocal music. Completely acapella and largely sacred, though I went a little ~crazy~ this time and threw in a couple of courtly love motets. I’ve listed the performers as the artist, and then the composers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm!

Previous early choral music specials: 2019, 2018

Tracklist:
1. Anonymous 4 – Peperit virgo (Unknown composer, England)
2. Huelgas-Ensemble – Apostolo glorioso (Guillaume Dufay)
3. The Gesualdo Six – Te lucis ante terminum (Thomas Tallis)
4. Anonymous 4 – Je te pri de cuer par amors (Unknown composer, France)
5. The Hilliard Ensemble – Sabbato Sancto: Responsorium 3 (Carlo Gesualdo)
6. Tonus Peregrinus – Credo: Da Gaudiorum Premia (John Dunstable)
7. Theatre of Voices – In hoc anni circulo (Unknown composer, France)
8. Tonus Peregrinus – Beata viscera (Pérotin)
9. The Hilliard Ensemble – Ave regina (Walter Frye)
10. Anonymous 4 – Quant je parti de m’amie (Unknown composer, France)
11. Ensemble Organum – Répons: Hodie nobis caelorum rex de virgi nasci (Unknown composer, France)
12. Sequentia – Nunc aperuit nobis (Hildegard von Bingen)
13. The Cambridge Singers – Libera nos, salva nos (John Shepperd)

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 33

Here’s my newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. I was working on this as news was breaking about the fire at Notre Dame cathedral, so I was thinking a lot about sacred music and sacred spaces, but also about the hard lines we draw between devotional music and non-denominational music that still embodies some aspects of reverence for the divine, and what it means to enjoy music or other aesthetic remnants of religions that we don’t necessarily subscribe to or think are problematic. Some of this music is explicitly religious, and some of it isn’t. I hope you like it! You can download an mp3 version here.

Tracklist:
1. Skin – Blood On Your Hands
2. Roberto Musci – Lidia After The Snow
3. Kenji Kawai – 謡II (Ghost City: Chant II)
4. Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Corses With Hector Zazou – Eramu In Campu
5. Sœur Marie Keyrouz – L’Apostikhon de l’Office de Mercredi Saint (Prière de Marie-Madeleine) “Ya Rabbi”…
6. Sainkho Namtchylak – Haragannig
7. David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir – Kyrie Opening
8. Dead Can Dance – Wilderness
9. Geinoh Yamashirogumi – カライ・モーメ (さあ行きましょう、娘さん)
10. Urszula Dudziak – Po Tamtej Stronie Gory
11. Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir – Kalimankou Denkou
12. Dead Can Dance – The Host Of Seraphim
13. Jocelyn Montgomery With David Lynch – Alleluia
14. Geinoh Yamashirogumi – Kleenex
15. Elena Ledda & Mauro Palmas – Sett’ispadas De Dolore

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 31: Early Choral Music Special II

This month for NTS Radio I put together a second volume of early Western vocal music (you can find the first volume, from last year, here). Technically some of this is toeing the line into the Baroque period. Completely  acapella and mostly sacred, though I think at least one of these songs are non-devotional love songs. I’ve listed the performers as the artist, and then the composers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm!

Tracklist:
1. Sequentia – Quia Ergo Femina Mortem Instruxit (Hildegard von Bingen)
2. Sequentia – Virga Lesse Floruit (Anonymous)
3. Anonymous 4 – Sequence, Stillat In Stellam Radium (Unknown, 14th c. England)
4. The Gesualdo Six – Tenebrae Factae Sunt (Carlo Gesualdo)
5. Sequentia – Per Partum Virginis (Anonymous, 15th c. Aquitania)
6. Emma Kirkby & The Consort Of Musicke – Luci Serene E Chiare (Claudio Monteverdi)
7. Cantica Symphonia – Juvenis Qui Puellam (Guillaume Dufay)
8. The Tallis Scholars – Versa Est In Luctum (Alonso Lobo)
9. Ensemble Organum – Deo Gratias (Anonymous, 12th c. Aquitania)
10. The King’s Singers – Tibi Laus, Tibi Gloria (Orlande de Lassus)
11. Red Byrd & Cappella Amsterdam – Magnus Liber Organi: Alleluya. Pascha Nostrum Immolatus Est  (Léonin)
12. The Hilliard Ensemble – Ave Regina (Walter Frye)
13. The Cambridge Singers – In Manus Tuas (John Shepperd)
14. The Tallis Scholars – Responsorium: Libera Me, Domine (Tomás Luis de Victoria)