Just because we can’t convene in real life just yet doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate together, safely and separately. And while we can't quite replicate the feeling of a crowded room on YouTube or Instagram Live, the last week has been a virtual festival highlighting a wide variety of ways we've been bringing the NPR live event experience to small screens.
First up: With a little help from Christian McBride and Marcus Miller, Jazz Night in America premiered Marcus Miller: Electric Miles Davis. The full-length concert film, captured back in 2019 at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, commemorated the 50th anniversary of when Miles Davis went “electric” and turned the jazz world upside down.
On Thursday night, NPR Music hosted the keynote panel conversation for this year’s Pop Conference, an annual music-writing and popular music studies gathering we love hosted by New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. The keynote, called "Fluxed: Making Popular Music in the Midst of Change and Transition,” brought together musicians and producers Rostam, Roísín Murphy, Devonté Hynes of Blood Orange and Tamara Lindeman of The Weather Station. They spoke to NPR Music’s critic and correspondent, Ann Powers, about how they think about change in their own music and how the shifting conditions of this past year have impacted their relationships with solace and community.
And on Friday, the Alt.Latino team continued its ongoing Instagram Live series with a conversation between host Felix Contreras and Latin hip-hop’s premiere queer female MC, Niña Dioz, ahead of her new album, Amor, Locura y Otros Vicios. Then we shared Tiny Desk Meets AFROPUNK, our collaboration with the annual music festival that highlights genre-defying Black artists: Watch all four sets from Colombian hip-hop trio ChocQuibTown, Portuguese singer-songwriter NENNY, Brazillian singer-songwriter Luedji Luna and Puerto Rican soul singer-songwriter Calma Carmona.
Gathering together from different screens,
Marissa Lorusso and Lyndsey McKenna |
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| - On this week’s All Songs Considered mix from Bob Boilen, we rewind to 1962, just two weeks before producer George Martin would start working with The Beatles to take a peek at his creative spirit with two newly remastered and remixed songs.
- This week’s New Music Friday episode of All Songs features a globe-spanning selection of new albums, from a collaboration between West African kora player Toumani Diabaté’s and the London Symphony Orchestra, to Small Infinity, the latest release from Nashville’s own Houston Kendrick.
- Brooklyn-based artist Arooj Aftab’s compositions feel like listening to a soundscape of her home country of Pakistan. Her third album, Vulture Prince, dedicated to the memory of her deceased younger brother, contends with grief and seeks to honor the musical tradition she’s inherited.
- Between two weekly episodes of All Songs, Tiny Desk (home) concerts and countless new releases each week, it can be tough to keep track of the very best new music. We’ve made it easy to keep up with Press Pause and Hit Play, our regularly-updated playlist of the best music you may have missed.
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- Turning the Tables is our project about challenging sexist, hierarchical notions of musical greatness. This year, the project is focusing on our personal relationships with music, asking questions like: How do we know when a particular piece of music is important to us? What does it mean to make a truly personal canon? In the first essay of the series, critic Laura Snapes writes about first hearing PJ Harvey’s Uh Huh Her as a teenager, and how it helped her realize the joy of subverting expectations.
- Indie rock songwriter Michelle Zauner, a.k.a. Japanese Breakfast, first caught our attention for her album 2016 Psychopomp, which explored her grief in the aftermath of her mother’s death. Her new memoir, Crying In H Mart, maps her relationship with her mother and her Korean heritage through the lens of Korean food.
- Composer, lyricist and record producer Jim Steinman died this week at age 73. He’s best known for his epic, operatic take on hard rock, including Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back To Me Now” and Meat Loaf’s 1977 album Bat Out Of Hell. "If you don't go over the top,” he once said, “you can't see what's on the other side.” It was a tough week for music lovers: This week, we also shared remembrances of New York rapper Black Rob, best known as the husky voice behind top-of-the-millennium hit single "Whoa!,"; Les McKeown, singer for Scotland's Bay City Rollers; and Shock G, leader of the hip-hop group Digital Underground.
- This week, Amplify With Lara Downes features a conversation with jazz bassist, composer and vocalist Esperanza Spalding. The self-described “athletically creative” musician discusses searching for origins and originality while writing an opera with jazz giant Wayne Shorter.
- Earlier this month, the Small Business Administration began accepting applications for its grant program intended to help long-beleaguered venues. The launch was rough, and after so long without a lifeline, time is running thin. In Music City, the situation feels particularly dire. "I don't think there's been any clear support for our community at all," one Nashville musician told Member station WPLN.
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Still working from home? Not Rina Sawayama. For her Tiny Desk (home) concert, the Japanese British pop star returns to an office – just not ours! – to perform tracks from her 2020 debut album, SAWAYAMA, under fluorescent lights with a skyline view.
Also this week: Filmed at home in Madrid, C.Tangana’s concert – featuring a star-studded cast of collaborators, plus appearances from his madre and tía – is the first live performance of his latest album, El Madrileño. And from a Richmond, Va., rooftop restaurant terrace, Butcher Brown’s (home) concert sizzles straight from the start. |
| This year, the International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert will once again take place online. You can catch it on a live webcast on YouTube and Facebook, starting at 5 p.m. ET on April 30. |
| As has become tradition, we asked our own Stephen Thompson to (cruelly) rank the best original song nominees ahead of Sunday’s Oscars. His pick for No. 1 – which you can also hear discussed on Pop Culture Happy Hour – just might surprise you. |
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