For musical polyglots this is the right section of my newsletter. I tell you about my latest discoveries and rediscovering old gems and giving them my spin. Music has a way of coming into your life more than once. And the freshest is the game of the fast web, I prefer the listening to stuff at the right time in life. More ritualistic. Like Leonard Bernstein talked about the end of Mahlers 5th fading Tempo to almost absolute zero, to indicate the end of life. Or like Arvo Pärt sees the same in the beginning and the end, alpha and the omega, a stream of life, a stream of music.

I this series I start with some review into my journey into orthodox Eastern European choir music this last year. It’s been a ride. Prepare to be taken out of your comfort zone.

  • This is how it started. This is our performance. Not our hit, but the one they published.
  • I also recommend this choir from Serbia. I love the simplicity.
  • And this girls choir from Moldova. They had some insane drones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8_n16W7AH

  • One of the best sounding ones. Gadeamus Academy Choir Plovtiv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuuF-v3boSI

  • The mentioned Arvo pärt special on NTS is a gem. Christian Orthodox Minimalism and choir music enthusiasts can not come around arvo pärt. NTS InFocus: Arvo Paert I myself would love to update you on my experience participating in one of the most prestigious Bulgarian orthodox choir festival in Burgas on the Black Sea. Contemporary orthodox music is both bewildering and beautiful. Thank you pavel Naydenov and nchoir for inviting me into a world outside of my bubble yet somehow in a weird discomfort zone :-)

  • An album entirely recorded with broken guitars by Max Davis. Listen on Bandcamp

  • Marshall Allen former sun ra band leader records first solo album at age 100. Okay. This one gave me chills because it is so beautiful. And poetic. Never to late to start something new.

  • Contemporary pieces by American composer Kali Malone who lives in Stockholm really took me by surprise. I was talking to Paul Parking from psychotic monks about choir music as we are recording right now for my solo album and my love for spiritual choirs in orthodox music. He dropped this Bomb. She is famous for organ minimal pieces but this all male voices choir is beautiful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmjj51QDRo0 I wish I was there yet with my compositions. I saw a organ piece which I didn't like last year in Vienna, but this piece is amazing.
  • Heading to a similar direction but sharper, more philosophical and heady, I had the honor to work on some pieces of French composer Karol Baffa with pavel Naydenov and hope we will be able to show them off soon to the Viennese crowds with nchoir. There is one piece that is released I can show you which got me hooked on his sense of working within the 12 tone system and still creating those frictions that tickle. But Check out this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8gsLQs0STo Medi Vita, a text writing during the crusade. "In the midst of life, we are in death!"

I try to keep these I heard short, not like playlists, but small introductions to pieces that worked with me. I listen to very little music usually, but intense. Please, share music with me, that goes into directions like this.