Each month here we visit with a member of the community to find out what albums they’ve been digging.
So much great music has been made during the pandemic. Cymin Samawatie’s fantastic global Trickster Orchestra from Berlin; Pharoah Sanders’s unexpected Promises with the British producer Floating Points and the London Symphony; Kassa Overall’s Visible Walls; with many star collaborators, a new album from our poet laureate Joy Harjo, who also plays a mean saxophone, I Pray for My Enemies; and very different new versions of Arvo Pärt on guitar by Pat Metheny and Derek Gripper. Not to mention Joel Harrison’s fabulous book of interviews with guitarists, about to come out, Guitar Talk.
David Rothenberg’s album In the Wake of Memories came out in 2020 from the Hudson Valley’s own Clermont Records. His latest release is From This World, Another, a book and album with Stephen Nachmanovitch. He has a story on whale music in the May issue of National Geographic, and in June he will be out again playing live with cicadas, but this time in New Jersey and Maryland.
This article appears in June 2021.
