Conducting Electricity

This summer I’ve been writing about the music I love beyond the classical bubble. Since its release in April 2016, I’ve been mildly obsessed with one album: Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’. ‘Lemonade’ is a deeply personal testament describing Queen Bey’s discovery that her husband – the rapper Jay-Z – had been unfaithful. During its twelve songs we accompany Beyoncé on her journey from denial and anger to emptiness and apathy, forgiveness and redemption. It’s also a manifesto of personal creativity. After several albums in which the musical content was largely driven by record companies’ desires to promote a sellable pop artist, Beyoncé emerges as a powerful narrator on her own terms: a web of unforgettable lyrics and a deliberately broad range of musical styles expressing unmediated pain

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I like to ask classical musicians what they listen to to relax. The answer is rarely our own music; stepping outside the classical world allows our critical facilities to switch off, which is blessed relief. My after-work tastes are hip hop, R&B, house, pop and a relatively small amount of jazz. Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about what makes some of this music so great. Today I’m writing about some of my favorite jazz: John Coltrane’s masterpiece A Love Supreme, recorded in 1964, and Brad Mehldau’s Art of the Trio vol. 4 from 1999. John Coltrane was one of the greatest saxophonist of his generation. Born in 1926, the same year as his friend and colleague Miles Davis, he led a complicated

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