The On the pod.net Fall Music Special:
Well, it’s Fall again and I wanted to share some of my favorite albums of the season with you. Mind you most of these have nothing to do with fall, they’re more winter/holiday albums, but this is usually when I feel the need to listen to them. I don’t know why exactly, but I guess to me, they all seem to share a similar underlying feel of nostalgia mixed with a little bit of longing and…well, that will be enough of the psycho-babble. In no particular order they are:
David Lanz – Christmas Eve
Liz Story – The Gift
Jim Brickman – By Heart
George Winston – Linus & Lucy: The Music of Vince Guaraldi
Jackson Browne – The Next Voice You Hear
Ok, I know what you’re thinking, “Four piano albums and Jackson Browne...how’s that work?” I’ve already said, I didn’t know. Music isn’t necessarily the most logical thing in the room you know, at least not always. Now, I haven’t dug out the Brickman disc yet this fall, but I am listening to Liz Story as I write this.
Piano For The Holidays:
David Lanz – Christmas Eve
Liz Story – The Gift
The album that has been influencing my Autumns the longest is Christmas Eve by David Lanz. I owe this all to my father actually. I think he bought this album the year it came out, back in 1994 and I promptly began to steal it earlier and earlier every year after. Christmas Eve, along with Jim Brickman’s By Heart, became staples to all of my studying for Midterms and Finals when I was in college. As an album, Christmas Eve is David Lanz interpreting the Holiday experience through music. He plays both traditional and original pieces for the season, arranged for solo piano. The solo piano manages to strip away all the things that clutter up the Holidays and gets to the heart of the season.
The Gift by Liz Story is similar to Christmas Eve in the sense that it is a (mostly) solo piano telling of the Holiday experience. However, even though there is occasional overlap in content, all similarities stop there. The differences in musical interpretation are limitless and The Gift could not be more different than Christmas Eve. Story is another gifted pianist with several solo albums and collaborations with her husband, and bassist, Joel Di Bartolo to her credit. The Gift gives a slightly more traditional treatment to the customary songs of the season she covers, but by presenting them in the solo piano setting they have a vastly different feel to them.
Both Christmas Eve and The Gift exemplify the quiet and reflective essence of the Holiday season for me.
More Piano, Less Holiday:
Jim Brickman – By Heart
George Winston – Linus & Lucy: The Music of Vince Guaraldi
Jim Brickman’s By Heart was given to me as a gift by one of my oldest friends, Dan Milewski. Dan’s an engineer by trade and has an innate gift for music. He noticed that I was so taken with By Heart and sent it to me a short time after I first heard it at his home. By Heart held a certain sense of peace in its solo piano work that made it very influential as an album and also in my own "noodleing" on the piano. While the abilities needed to pull off this album were no doubt staggering to achieve, Brickman makes By Heart seem simple and pure. By Heart was also the beginning of his collaboration with vocalists, as is evident by the albums closing and title track, By Heart…but one song does not a vocal album make, or an instrumental album rune.
George Winston is a perennial favorite of “New Age” music fans. Anyone familiar with him may wonder how music from Peanuts gets into a Fall Music Special and not his albums Autumn or December. I guess I don’t really have an answer to that other than they did not have the effect on me that Linus & Lucy did. I guess that in addition to my love of the George Winston album, the material by Vince Guaraldi and the context given most of it by Charles Schulz has to be taken into account. Winston presents very true, yet very modern interpretations of Guaraldi’s compositions in a solo piano format. All of the tracks on the album are outstanding pieces and as a whole Linus & Lucy is just such an entertaining listen. My only wish for the album would be for it to include a rendition of Guaraldi’s Christmas Time Is Here. Who knows, maybe there will be a reissue?
Not A Piano Album…At Least Not Entirely:
Jackson Browne – The Next Voice You Hear
I know what you’re thinking, "Jackson Browne’s good anytime of the year, why is this a fall album." I grant you your point. I don’t really have a reason for this being a fall album, it’s just when I seem to listen to it the most. The entire album is fantastic, spanning his entire career up to 1997 when The Next Voice You Hear was released. My own personal take on the disc is that the money is in the first half, and if I needed to narrow it down even further, I’d feel confident in saying the first four songs. Before an iPod, where else could you get Doctor My Eyes, These Days, Fountain of Sorrow and Late for the Sky back to back. Even then you still have songs like The Pretender, Running on Empty, Somebody’s Baby and Tender Is the Night yet to come. I guess there’s just something about listening to those first four songs with a bit of a chill in the air that fits with me somehow.
Honorable Mention:
K’s Choice – Cocoon Crash
K’s Choice – Almost Happy
K’s Choice is/was from Belgium and featured Sarah Bettens on vocals and her brother, Gert, on guitar. I discovered them on a road trip to New Hampshire several years ago, when, needing something to listen to, I picked up a copy of Cocoon Crash on my way out of town. Cocoon Crash is my favorite of their albums and I could list almost all of the tracks on it as being a great first introductions to the band. Almost Happy comes in as a close second. Think upbeat, but not sugary, alternative sounding with a female singer and you’re in the general vicinity. I would highly recommend picking up Cocoon Crash for a listen, or a road trip for that matter.
So there you have it, my top five Fall albums.
Lots of “New Age-y” solo piano stuff, i know...but maybe it’s that whole "everything is dying" Fall kind of thing. The trees are all loosing their leaves, so stripping music down to one instrument seems to match the surroundings.
Who knows?
What I do know, is that all of these albums are ones that I listen to over and over again...every Fall.
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