ANNE: This year marks the 100th anniversary of Claude Debussy’s death. I think of his music as part of the classical canon, but this wonderfully perceptive article by pianist Stephen Hough helped me hear it differently — as the first truly modern, experimental music. If you listen to Debussy’s Preludes, for example, they sound almost improvised, as though you’ve caught the pianist talking to himself, alone with the keyboard. Keith Jarrett can sound the same way in his solo piano recordings. But Debussy’s ethereal, quicksilver quality is deliberately, meticulously crafted. And that’s what I think makes him so modern — the way he’s always dissolving structures and then returning to them. It’s a good metaphor for the world today, as international alliances seem to be unraveling everywhere. Debussy died at a similar time, near the end of WWI, when the world as he’d known it was undone. It’s comforting to remember that beauty remains.
STEVE: I’ve been on an Anouar Brahem kick lately. He’s a Tunisian oud player and composer who fuses Arab classical music with jazz. Some years back a friend gave me his album “Le Pas du Chat Noir” and I was immediately hooked. Since then he’s collaborated with a lot of great jazz musicians — most recently, with Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland and Django Bates on the album “Blue Maqams.” This is meditative and dreamy music that’s perfect for when I’m in a reflective and soulful mood.
HALEEMA: When Kali Uchis finally dropped her debut album Isolation, which she has been working up to for years, I felt like I was being rewarded. She’s a singer who first caught my attention with slowed-down, romantic R&B vocals fused with Spanish pop. With her latest album though, which she released just this month, Uchis went from singer to storyteller. She invited listeners into her world as an immigrant, a go-getter, and a young woman navigating the confusing landscape of modern love.
SHANNON: Spanish guitar virtuosos Manuel Gonzalez, Xavier Coll, and Luis Robisco call themselves the “Maestros de La Guitarra,” and play together with an energetic humor, telling serious and whimsical stories with their music. I heard them recently, playing compositions by Federico Garcia Lorca, Chick Corea and Paco de Lucia. The concert took place under a stained glass skylight in the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona, an architectural wonder built in 1905, which completely envelops the audience with art and music.
CHARLES: I listen to some weird music. Cliphop — where bleeps and clicks are added to ambient music — and drone synth music, where if you are looking for a beat or even a melody, you can forget it. It gets, uh, different.
Music has the ability to uplift our spirits. Think about that. What a gift. And for me nothing uplifts more than singing along, in my terrible voice, to songs I know every word to, every breath to. My commute is 15 minutes. That's it. After lunches are packed and permissions slips signed and the if-you-have-to-wear-a-coat-or-not argument is finally done, it is me alone in my car belting it out. You could call these songs guilty pleasures, but I call them batteries.
MARK: My deep dives into YouTubeLand have had cycled some pretty strange things into my "in the background while I work" playlist. Seriously, it gets weird. Like Toto's "Out of Africa" as it sounds played in a vacant mall, or as a 1980s-era video game theme song. Gloria Gaynor and Metallica in a bizarre disco duet. The theme for the National Aerobic Championship. And, most importantly, my office theme song.