Five Albums to Get You Through the First Week of Classes

"Who had this crazy idea to invent school all of a sudden? Charlemagne!"

I forgot how rough it is to go from doing absolutely nothing to absolutely everything. One day, I'm sitting on the recliner in my room at home watching Netflix, the next day I'm sprawled on my apartment couch after having carried twenty pounds of groceries back from my four classes and three rehearsals. But hey, such is the story of academic vacations.

Anyway, considering that many of you will be dealing with the same thing in the coming weeks, here are five albums that will help you through your first week back on the job (or any rough week, for that matter), whether you're a student or not.

If you ever wanted your classical music with a side of indie (or vice versa):
Love I Obey (Rosemary Standley & Helstroffer's Band)

To give you some context, this is the album I listened for comfort when I was stuck on the D train for almost two hours this summer. Rosemary Standley makes her career with indie band Moriarty. Bruno Helstroffer is a blues guitarist who plays early music as a day job. Together, they dreamed up this album of bluesy takes on British Renaissance airs. Standley's voice is (truly, in a non-cliché way) unlike any other singer I've ever heard, throaty and warm with a distinctive twang to the diction. And Helstroffer is just an incredible musician in all respects -- his solo debut is also among my favorite albums ever.

For a really, really good version of a piece you might know:
Bach: Motets (Collegium Vocale Gent, cond. Philippe Herreweghe)

This recording is just squeaky clean. Most of the motets are only one singer to a part on this album; the intimate accuracy gives me chills every time. The cast includes Vox Luminis soprano Zsuzsi Tóth; superstar French countertenor Damien Guillon; Bach specialist bass Peter Kooij; and a smattering of other big names in the European early music scene. When I want Bach, this album is my first stop (this version of Jesu, meine Freude is also my go-to tipsy soundtrack, something I can safely say now that I'm 21 😉).

For an album that will replace your dinner party jazz playlist:
Jazz på svenska (Jan Johansson, piano; Georg Riedel, bass)

I usually spring for new jazz over old jazz, but this album is a classic (just ask the quarter of a million people who have bought copies). Sparse and smooth, Jan Johansson takes Swedish folk tunes and adapts them for a low-key duo of piano and bass. He treats the original folk tunes with such respect -- from his adaptations, I know exactly how the original was meant to sound. There's a good reason why it's the best-selling Swedish jazz album of all time, and still maintains a degree of relevance more than 55 years after its release.

*swoon*

If you want to hear the best music written for the best instrument you've never heard of:
Marais: Pièces favorites (François Joubert-Caillet, viol; L'Achéron)

Marin Marais wrote hours and hours of music for the viol (an earlier predecessor of the modern double bass that looks kind of like a cello -- if you're curious, watch Tous les Matins du Monde starring Gérard Dépardieu). It's all great, but some movements are simply transcendent. François Joubert-Caillet is the single viol player who has most consistently impressed me; here, he's selected a representative sample of Marais's most outstanding works and compiled them onto one phenomenal album. His continuo team is outstanding (continuo is a group of instruments that together comprise accompaniment for baroque music -- usually a melodic instrument and an instrument that plays chords e.g. a second viol and a harpsichord) and help to cement this album among the most satisfying Marais albums on the market today. And if you really like it, you can listen to his most recent album, a six-hour recording of one of Marais's complete books for viol.

If you really just want to get lost in the sauce:
Songs of Olden Times: Estonian Folk Hymns and Runic Songs (Heinavanker, dir. Margo Kõlar)

I've sung Heinavanker's praises before, but I'm truly hooked on their album. It's the perfect album for a low-key, relaxing evening -- tonight, I put it on while waiting for my focaccia dough to rise. I'd say I listen at least twice a month, if not more. Cannot recommend highly enough. Cook to it. Meditate to it. Sleep to it. Work to it. Seriously.

[33] Jordan/DelGiudice: Collaborative Compositions & Improvisations at Scholes Street Studio

The cover of the album -- link below!

WHO: Joe Jordan, oboe/English horn/piano; Dylan DelGiudice, guitar/drums/saxophone
WHAT: Collaborative Compositions & Improvisations
WHERE: Scholes Street Studio
WHEN: July 2, 2019 at 8:00pm

Reviewing people you know is generally ill-advised. At best, you look biased; at worst, you lose a friend.

But you know what else was ill-advised? 50 concerts in one summer. And that didn't stop me, did it?

In simpler words: I care about supporting my friends more than I care about the rules.

Anyway, you know the drill. Tiny little venue in Brooklyn. I love those. Friends. I love those. New music. I love those.

I thought the performance was great. My grandmother would disagree. You see, when we start playing music, we are taught that there are "good sounds" and "bad sounds." Certain combinations of fingers lead to "good," and others lead to "bad."

But for this duo, nothing was off limits. It's one thing to push a random combination of keys and hope for the best; it's another thing to know exactly what toot, honk, or squawk will come out and to use that to make organized(-ish) and well-thought-out music. And it's yet another thing to have that knowledge on more than one instrument.

I'm pretty sure Joe and Dylan explored every possible noise on their collective six instruments throughout the night. Guitar effects. Fluttered oboe overtones. Plucked piano strings modified with a guitar slide. Everything, really.

I can't think of a better way to spend a Tuesday night. And, lucky for you, they released it onto an album! See for yourself!

[16] Camille Bertault Quartet and Friends at Birdland | # 1Summer50Concerts

WHO: Camille Bertault Quartet and Friends

WHAT: "Pas de Géant" Project

WHERE: Birdland Jazz Club

WHEN: Wednesday, June 12, 9:45pm

"You knew you were coming to see jazz, but you didn't know you were coming to see CRAZY JAZZ!!!!!"

And some crazy jazz was exactly what I needed on that night.

For the first two weeks of this project, I was sticking to a very strict regimen: one concert per day, two on Saturdays, a matinee on Sundays so I can grocery shop and meal prep for the week.

I'm glad to say I didn't fully burn out. But last Sunday, I decided that I needed to take a couple of concert-free days. One night I stayed in and did nothing (I mean, I tried to blog, but that didn't work so well). The next night, I went for a stroll with a professor. And Wednesday, I finally went back to the concert scene, but not before a lengthy family dinner.

Just goes to show you that you CAN get tired of things you love. I mean, that shouldn't surprise me, but sometimes I forget.

Anyway, this show was the perfect potpourri to get me back in the swing of things. Not that I expected it to be a potpourri -- I've seen many of Bertault's YouTube videos, starting with the viral one in which she scats along to the solo from Giant Steps ("Pas de Géant" in French -- that's kind of her thing), so I know she knows her way around the classical canon. She's scatted the first variation of Goldberg, she's done Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum from Debussy's Children's Corner suite, all sorts of stuff. So naturally, after a short original song for her introduction, she launched into a "tribute track" to the composers who had influenced her over the years; apparently, her father started her on piano at the ripe old age of three years old.

"Un, deux, un deux trois quatre"

And she launches into Goldberg at...help me here Moranis!

                                         

Bertault had obviously done this a million times before. Her pianist, Vitor Gonçalves, looked petrified, but kept his cool to play a musically and technically impressive Bach. She followed with a series of mutations on the first movement of Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, and then a whole song based on Satie's first Gymnopédie.

So at this point we know she does classical well. She goes into a short phase of French standards, including a Serge Gainsbourg song that starts, "I drink regularly to forget my wife's friends." Charming. That one ended up with a stone-cold sober Bertault lying on the floor "drunkenly" babbling on in French about all of her problems, and eventually falling asleep on the ground -- I gather the band was a group of New York ringers, because they seemed bewildered.

Almost as bewildered as when Bertault shooed them offstage after that chart, and invited up a piano professor from the Manhattan School of Music (god help me if I can figure out which one -- Solomon Mikowski rings a bell?) who is apparently a Birdland regular. And they played. Four-hands. A movement of Ravel's Mother Goose suite. He was sightreading. She hadn't practiced. And you know what? It was fantastic. More fun was had in that room in those four minutes than at the entire Renee Rosnes show I had seen the previous week.

Please someone tell me the name of this bassist!

The combo came back on after that -- I should take this opportunity to mention that the combo she had behind her was AMAZING. Though I'm pretty sure the trio was hired for the occasion, they knew the charts well, looking up and smiling at each other as if they were....having fun? GASP! Gonçalves's solos were the perfect character foils to Bertault's; where her solos were restricted by the technical capabilities of the human voice (even a voice as agile as Bertault's has its limits) his picked up slack, and vice versa. The bassist, whose name I couldn't catch from the stage (I think I might have heard Eduardo? Google produced no results for me) had a smirk on his face that showed he knew EXACTLY what he was doing the whole time. And the drummer, John Hadfield, was equally at home in jazz and bossa styles -- Bertault is a self-professed Brazilian music obsessor -- and his playing had the perfect balance of reliability and pizzazz.

Speaking of Brazilian music, she kicked her combo off AGAIN and brought on guitarist Diego Figueiredo, with whom she did the Carmen Miranda Radio Days bossa classic Tico-Tico no Fubá. Bertault and Figueiredo were doing a show at Birdland the next night -- I seriously considered canceling my plans and going, their rendition was so fantastic.

The moral of the story is, next time Camille Bertault is in NYC, get your butt on out to see her. Whether she's solo with a pianist or guitarist, or with a larger group, she's incredibly fun to watch, not to mention a fabulous singer. Besides which, you basically get three shows for the price of one!