I had a special moment last week. It was one of those musical awakenings where you instantly loved something and were completely blown away by it. You were suddenly pushed into a world of sound that you loved but did not know existed.
Over the last year I have noticed my musical preferences change. I still enjoy my top artists but instrumental music was becoming more popular. I became more dependant on soundtrack scores from Zimmer, McCreary or Giacchino. I went deeper into Philip Glass’ discography finding great enjoyment in Mishima.
When I wanted a change of pace and listened to something with lyrics I went folk with The Rural Alberta Advantage, The Wooden Sky, The Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons but I was becoming more dependant on music without words.
After taking up Wendy’s advice on Fabrizio Paterlini I would spend days at work listening to music and not listen to a single song with words in it. Paterlini was a logical step to where I ended up last week, but I got there for an unrelated reason.
I haven’t been in a musical funk, I enjoy what I have but I didn’t know what was missing until Taylor sent me a link to Ludovico Einaudi. He came across Einaudi while listening to the last.fm radio and thought I would like the song. The song was “Fly” and it had a “Metamorphosis One” (Philip Glass) and “Everyday” (Carly Comando) feel to it and I was in love.
I got Einaudi’s two most recent albums, but when I heard the first seventy seconds of “Lady Labryinth” everything stopped. This song spoke to me on some other dimension and I knew I loved it. There was no hesitation in rating the song five and submitting a “Love” to last.fm before the song even ended, I just knew.
The next few days I jumped between Einaudi’s Divenire and Nightbook, slowly expanding out to his earlier work. There were some beautiful solo piano pieces, earlier work may be a little more unpolished and less engaging but still amazing all the same. Taylor continued exploring on last.fm and exposed me to Roberto Cacciapaglia by way of “Oceano“.
In a few short days I had narrowed in on minimalist piano and string quartet Italian composers that made some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard and I’m sure this will carry me further on my piano listening adventures.
<3. Glad you liked it 🙂
You may have heard of “The Signal” on CBC radio 2 in the evenings; it’s generally all instrumental, but some of it is pretty avant-garde.
Great suggestion, I have not heard of this but I’m definitely interested! Looking around on their website they do offer podcasts so if I can’t tune in during the evenings I’ll start with those and see if my interest is held.
August 2 edit: I listened to the latest podcast of “The Signal”, I liked it. Wasn’t sure if it was directly up my ally but there was some good songs so I’ve subscribed to the podcast and will listen weekly as I doubt I will ever be up long enough to hear it on CBC 2.