
Dora Jar — Wizard
Edyn-Mae Stevenson
What’s more on theme for October than pretending to be something you’re not? In this song, Dora Jar is “not a shy little girl.” She’s a wizard, an omen, a mystery novel, and the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland (just to name a few). Listen if you dare!
Gabriel Fauré, Aline Piboule — Barcarolle No. 12 in E-flat Major, Op. 106bis
Laura Carlo
When the weather gets colder I find myself drawn to "homebody" music. You know, curling up on the couch by the window, soft blanket wrapped around me as I watch the leaves fall. The stuff of movies on PBS, natch. And I found a wonderful new album to accompany my homebody moments: pianist Aline Piboule's "Fauré: Nocturnes and Barcarolles." There are 11 tracks played with passion and an understanding of Fauré's intentions. Some of the pieces are playful, some express loneliness, some invite intimacy. As a total piano nerd, I loved that she's playing a restored 1929 Gaveau that came from the collection of the Musee de la Musique in Paris. Legendary pianist Artur Rubenstein thought the Gaveaus were too stiff. Piboule has no problem making them sound warm and welcoming. Checks off all the boxes for me this month!
Mk.gee — I Want
Julia Marcus
Imagine this: you're at your high school prom. Amidst the sea of people dancing and the loud, bass-y music, you lock eyes with your crush from across the room. You try to read their expression in the flashing lights. Do they want you to come over? Do they mistake you for someone else? "I Want" perfectly recreates this wishy-washy tango, the tension between you and what you want.
Pierre Bastien — Caravan
Sai Patel
We're deep into the fall, and with that sunlight getting sparser and sparser, I feel like vitamin D deficiency is making me go a little bit crazy. Luckily, I've worked out a procedure that helps me spend my energy when I start to go nuts, which is to choose a jazz standard and listen to every possible version of it that I can find. Boy howdy, is it fun to explore, and incredibly gratifying when you find a version that you love, like this performance of Caravan by Pierre Bastien. Bastien takes a piece that I generally hear performed as energetic and adventurous, and slows it down, adding in droning and a mechanical percussive element, changing the whole atmosphere of the arrangement while maintaining that powerful cinematic feeling that Caravan inspires. It makes me feel like a private investigator in a city full of grit, which has honestly been a really fun feeling as the days are getting colder and colder.
George Fenton, Graunke Symphony Orchestra — High Spirits Overture
Katie Ladrigan
Problem: You're stuck with a moldering old castle, trying to run it as a hotel, and failing to make bank. In fact, the bank wants to take it from you! Solution: Dress the wait-staff up as ghosts and give those pesky American tourists a spooky ol' time (until your own ancestors wake up from the grave and decide enough is enough, let the professionals handle this, thank you very much)! The laughs and screams are all there, with an all-star cast (Peter O'Toole, Daryl Hannah, Steve Guttenberg, plus a young Liam Neeson as a randy Irish ghost!) and a kicker of a soundtrack — the overture is enough to wake the dead, make 'em put on some dancing shoes, and give us a jig. Jump on the spectral bandwagon for one heck of a good time!
RAYE — Worth It.
Jamie Kmak
I started taking voice lessons about a month ago. My coach has me listening to a bunch of R&B and jazz, so my YouTube recommendations are currently full of jazz singers and crooner tunes galore.
Enter RAYE. NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts have way too much control over the music I listen to these days, and I am very okay with that. I’m honestly embarrassed it took me a year to listen to her Tiny Desk and that I hadn’t heard of her even sooner. Highly recommend taking a listen. It will be "Worth It."
Komitas, Kirill Gerstein — Armenian Dances: Manushaki of Vagharshapat
Brian McCreath
For "Music in Time of War," pianist Kirill Gerstein places works by Claude Debussy side by side with an artist he deeply admired, Komitas, the Armenian priest, ethnomusicologist, and composer. Debussy’s music makes up most of the two-volume recording, which, in its physical form, includes an astounding hard-bound coffee table book full of fascinating essays on the relationship between wartime and artistic expression. But the selections by Komitas are uniquely hypnotic, especially this first of his Armenian Dances. Along with his formidable skills and gifts as a musician, Gerstein is a deep thinker, and his framing of this music in relation to the conflicts of our own day lend this release a very powerful relevance.
The Blasting Company, Jack Jones — Into the Unknown
Philip Jones
Every fall, I rewatch the ten-episode animated series "Over the Garden Wall," which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. Each episode is about ten minutes, and taken together you get an enchanting 100 minute journey through the deep woods. I won't explain the plot, but the feeling of watching is something like the original "Winnie the Pooh" cartoon if the whole thing were the Heffalump sequence, or "Alice and Wonderland" if Alice was Frodo Baggins. The voice cast is remarkable: Elijah Wood, Tim Curry, John Cleese, and Christopher Plummer all appear, but it's the soundtrack that makes the atmosphere irresistible. I recommend putting the whole thing on shuffle as you bake a pumpkin pie for the ultimate experience, but at the very least, treat yourself to the title song, sung by legendary crooner Jack Jones (who also plays a singing frog in the show).
Danish String Quartet — Stormpolskan
Kendall Todd
At long last, the Danish String Quartet is back with another album of Scandinavian folk music! Brian McCreath chose one of the pieces from "Keel Road" for last month’s Instant Replay, and I have to do my part to hype it up as well: "Keel Road" is gorgeous, full of tunes that skew just to the left of familiar, feeling at once fresh and new and very, very old. Stormpolskan is a piece I first heard while producing an episode of WCRB In Concert with the Celebrity Series of Boston that aired last spring, and it struck me as something special then, too. The hint of Vivaldi at the very end is the icing on this tumultuous cake.
Sabrina Carpenter — Don't Smile
Will Peacock
As CRB’s Lead Music Programmer, I tend to listen to a lot of classical music; it’s a part of my job description. But sometimes you just need to listen to some Sabrina Carpenter and let loose, and I’ve been doing just that since August with her release of "Short n’ Sweet." All of the songs on the album are great, ranging from country, R&B, pop, and disco influences (among others), with sophisticated lyrics and clever wordplay throughout, but a surprising hit that I’ve returned to again and again is the low-fi/sad girl conclusion of the album “Don’t Smile.” I think I enjoy it so much exactly because it is so different from any other song on the album. If you haven’t heard it, I implore you to check it out!
Ravyn Lenae — Love Me Not
Noor Jehan
This one came up on my Spotify daylist and I haven't been able to shake it! It's the perfect accompaniment for my cooking nights and driving around looking at the foliage. A modern classic with that spunky, warm energy with a hint of sensitivity that feels straight out of a Nora Ephron movie!
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Enjoy this month's playlist below, or listen to the full Instant Replay playlist here.