#the power that one (the singer) can produce gets amplified when shared with the community through participation
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CABIN FEVER - Aaron Dessner: Producing folklore and evermore
Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Tom Doyle
The pandemic gave Taylor Swift a chance to explore new musical paths, with two lockdown albums co-written and produced by the National's Aaron Dessner.
Few artists during the pandemic have been as prolific as Taylor Swift. In July 2020, she surprise-released folklore, a double-length album recorded entirely remotely and in isolation. It went on to become the biggest global seller of the year, with four million sales and counting. Then, in December, she repeated the trick with the 15-song evermore, which quickly became Swift's eighth consecutive US number one.
In contrast to her country-music roots and the shiny synth-pop that made her a superstar, both folklore and evermore showcased a very different Taylor Swift sound: one veering more towards atmospheric indie and folk. The former album was part-produced by Swift and her regular co-producer Jack Antonoff (St Vincent, Lana Del Rey), while the other half of the tracks were overseen by a new studio collaborator, Aaron Dessner of the National. For evermore, aside from one Antonoff-assisted song, Dessner took full control of production.
Good Timing
Although his band are hugely popular and even won a Grammy for their 2017 album Sleep Well Beast, Aaron Dessner admits that it initially felt strange for an indie-rock guitarist and keyboard player to be pulled into such a mainstream project. Swift had already declared herself a fan of the National, and first met the band back in 2014. Nonetheless, Dessner was still surprised when the singer sent him a text "out of the blue" last spring. "I mean, I didn't think it was a hoax," he laughs. "But it was very exciting and a moment where you think it's like serendipity or something, especially in the middle of the pandemic. When she asked if I would ever consider writing with her, I just happened to have a lot of music that I had worked really hard on. So, the timing was sort of lucky. It opened up this crazy period of collaboration. It was a pretty wild ride."
Since 2016, Aaron Dessner has been based at his self-built rural facility, Long Pond Studio, in the Hudson Valley, upstate New York. The only major change to the studio since SOS last spoke to Dessner in October 2017 has been the addition of a vintage WSW Siemens console built in 1965. "It had been refurbished by someone," he says, "and I think there's only three of them in the United States. I heard it was for sale from our friend [and the National producer/mixer] Peter Katis. That's a huge improvement here."
Although the National made Sleep Well Beast and its 2019 successor I Am Easy To Find at Long Pond, the band members are scattered around the US and Europe, meaning Dessner is no stranger to remote working and file sharing. This proved to be invaluable for his work with Swift. Dessner spent the first six weeks of lockdown writing music that he believed to be for Big Red Machine, his project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. Instead, many of these work-in-progress tracks would end up on folklore. Their first collaboration (and the album's first single), 'cardigan', for instance, emerged from an idea Dessner had been working on backstage during the National's European arena tour of Winter 2019.
"I sent her a folder and in the middle of the night she sent me that song," Dessner explains. "So, the next morning I was just listening to it, like, `Woah, OK, this is crazy."
On The Move
As work progressed, it quickly became apparent that Swift and Dessner were very much in tune as a songwriting and producing unit. There was very little Dessner had to do, he says, in terms of chopping vocals around to shape the top lines. "I think it's because I'm so used to structuring things like a song, with verses and choruses and bridges," he reckons. "In most cases, she sort of kept the form. If she had a different idea, she would tell me when she was writing and I would chop it up for her and send it to her. But, mostly, things kind of stayed in the form that we had."
Dessner and Swift were working intensively and at high speed throughout 2020, so much so that on one occasion the producer sent the singer a track and went out for a run in the countryside around Long Pond. By the time he got back, Swift had already written 'the last great american dynasty' and it was waiting for him in his inbox. "That was a crazy moment," he laughs. "One of the astonishing things about Taylor is what a brilliant songwriter she is and the clarity of her ideas and, when she has a story to tell, the way she can tell it. I think she's just been doing it for so long, she has a facility that makes you feel like you could never do what she's capable of. But we were a good pair because I think the music was inspiring to her in such a way that the stories were coming."
Swift's contributions to folklore were recorded in a makeshift studio in her Los Angeles home. Laura Sisk engineered the sessions as the singer recorded her vocals, using a Neumann U47, in a neighbouring bedroom. Live contact between Swift, Sisk, Dessner and Long Pond engineer Jonathan Low was done through real-time online collaboration platform Audiomovers.
"We would listen in remotely and kind of go back and forth," says Dessner. "We used Audiomovers and then we would have Zoom as a backup. But mainly we were just using Audiomovers, so we could actually be in her headphones. It's powerful, it's great. I've used it a lot with people during this time. Then, later on, when we recorded evermore, a lot of the vocals were done here at the studio actually when Taylor was visiting when we did the [Disney+ documentary] Long Pond Sessions. But Taylor's vocals for folklore were all done remotely."
Keeping Secrets
Given the huge international interest in Swift, the team had to work with an elaborate file-sharing arrangement to ensure that the tracks didn't leak online. Understandably, Dessner won't be drawn on the specifics. "Yeah, I mean we had to be very careful, so everything was very secretive," he says. "There were passwords on both ends and we communicated in a specific way when sharing mixes and everything. There was a high level of confidentiality and data encryption. It was sort of a learning curve.
"I'm not used to that," he adds, "'cause usually we're just letting files kind of fly all over the Internet [laughs]. But I think with someone like her, there's just so many people that are paying attention to every move that she makes, which can be a little, I think, oppressive for her. We tried to make it as comfortable as possible and we got used to how to get things to her and back to us. It worked pretty well."
Drums & Guitars
For the generally minimalist beat programming on the records, Dessner would sometimes turn to his more expensive new analogue drum generators - Vermona's DRM1 and Dave Smith's Tempest - but more often used the Synthetic Bits iOS app FunkBox. "There's just a lot of great vintage drum machine sounds in there, and they sound pretty cool, especially if you overdrive it," he says. "Often I send that through an amplifier, or through effects into an amplifier. Then I have a [Roland) TR-8 and a TR-8S that I use a lot. I also use the drum machine in the [Teenage Engineering] OP-1. So, a song like 'willow', that's just me tapping the OP-1."
Elsewhere, Dessner's guitar work appears on the tracks, with the intricate melodic layering on 'the last great american dynasty' from folklore having been inspired by Radiohead's In Rainbows. "Almost all of the electric guitar on Taylor's records is played direct through a REDDI DI into the Siemens board," he says. "It's usually just my 1971 Telecaster played direct and it just sounds great. Oftentimes I just put a little spring reverb on it and sometimes I'll overdrive the board like it's an amplifier, 'cause it breaks up really beautifully.
"I have a 1965 [Gibson] Firebird that I play usually through this 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb. So, if I am playing into an amp, that's what it is. But on 'the last great american dynasty', those little pointillistic guitars, that's just played direct with the Telecaster through the board."
Elsewhere, Aaron Dessner took Taylor Swift even further out of her sonic comfort zone. A key track on folklore, the Cocteau Twins-styled 'epiphany', features her voice amid a wash of ambient textures, created by Dessner slowing down and reversing various instrumental parts in Pro Tools. "I created a drone using the Mellotron [MD4000D] and the Prophet and the OP-1 and all kinds of synth pads," he says. "Then I duplicated all the tracks, and some of them I reversed and some of them I dropped an octave. All manner of using varispeed and Polyphonic Elastic Audio and changing where they were sitting. Just to create like this Icelandic glacier of sounds was my idea. Then I wrote the chord progression against that.
"The [Pro Tools] session was not happy," he adds with a chuckle. "It kept
crashing. Eventually I had to print the drone but I printed it by myself and there was some crackle in it. It was distorting. And then I couldn't recreate it so Jon Low, who was helping me, was kind of mad at me 'cause he was like, 'You can't do that.' And I was like, 'Well, I was working quickly. I didn't know it'd become a song."
Orchestra Of Nowhere
Meanwhile, the orchestrations that appear on several of the tracks were scored by Aaron's twin brother and National bandmate, Bryce Dessner, who is located in France. "I would just make him chord charts of the songs and send them to him in France," Aaron says. "Then he would orchestrate things in Sibelius and send the parts to me. I would send the parts and the instrumental tracks to different players remotely and they would record them literally in their bedrooms or in their attics. None of it was done as a group, it was all done separately. But that's how we've always worked in the National so it's quite natural."
On folklore standout track 'exile', Justin Vernon of Bon Iver delivered his stirring vocal for the duet remotely from his home in Eaux Claires, Wisconsin. "He's renovating his studio, so he has a little home studio in his garage," says Dessner. "It was Taylor's idea to approach him. I sent him Taylor's voice memo of her singing both parts, and he got really excited and loved the song and then he wrote the extra part in the bridge.
"I do a lot of work remotely with Justin also, so it was easy to send him tracks and he would track to it and send back his vocals. I was sending him stems, so usually it's just a vocal stem of Taylor and an instrumental stem and then if he wants something deeper, I'll give him more stems. But generally, he's just working with the vocal layers and an instrumental."
Vernon also provided the grainy beat that kicks off 'closure', one of two tracks on evermore that started life as a sketch for the second Big Red Machine album. "It was this little loop that Justin had given me in this folder of 'Starters', he calls them. I had heard that and been playing the piano to it. But I was hearing it in 5/4, although it's not in 5/4. 'Closure' really opened everything up further. There were no real limits to where we were gonna try to write songs."
Given the number of remote players, Dessner says there were surprisingly few problems with the file swapping and that it was a fairly painless technical process. "It was pretty smooth, but there were issues," he admits. "Sometimes sample-rate issues, or if I happened to give someone an instrumental that was an MP3, that sometimes lines up differently than if you send them an actual WAV that's bounced on the grid. So, sometimes I'd have to kinda eyeball things.
"If there was trouble it started to be because of track counts. I probably only used 20 percent of what was actually recorded, 'cause we would try a lot of things, y'know. So, eventually the sessions got kinda crazy and you'd have to deactivate a lot of things and print things. But we got used to that."
Soft Piano
Aaron Dessner's characteristic dampened upright piano sound, familiar from the National's albums, is much in evidence throughout both folklore and evermore. "The upright is a Yamaha U1 that I've had for more than a decade. Usually, I play it with the soft pedal down and that's the sound of 'hoax' or 'seven' or 'cardigan', y'know, that felted sound. It kind of almost sounds like an electric piano.
"I always mic it the same way, just with two [AKG] 414s, and they're always the same distance off the wall. I had a studio in Brooklyn for 10 years and then when I moved here, I copied the same [wooden] pattern on the wall. And the reason I did that is 'cause of how much I love how this piano sounds bouncing off that wall. It just does something really special for the harmonics."
When on other folklore songs, such as 'exile' or 'the 1', where the piano was the main sonic feature of the track, Dessner played his Steinway grand. "A lot of times we use a pair of Coles [4038s] on the Steinway, just cause it's darker. But sometimes we'll have the 414s there as well and choose."
Keeping Warm
On both folklore and evermore, Taylor Swift's voice is very much front and center and high in the mix, and generally sounds fairly dry. "I think the main thing was I wanted her vocals to have a more full range than maybe you typically hear," Dessner explains. "'Cause I think a lot of the more pop-oriented records are mixed a certain way and they take some of the warmth out of the vocal, so that it's very bright and it kinda cuts really well on the radio. But she has this wonderful lower warmth frequency in her voice which is particularly important on a song like `seven'. If you carved out that mud, y'know, it wouldn't hit you the same way. Or, like, `cardigan', I think it needs that warmth, the kind of fuller feeling to it. It makes it darker, but to me that's where a lot of emotion is."
Effects-wise, almost all of the treatments were done in the box. "There's no outboard reverbs printed," says Dessner. "The only things that we did print would be like an [Eventide] H3000 or sometimes the [WEM] CopiCat tape delay for just a really subtle slap. But generally, it's just different reverbs in the box that Jon was using. He uses the Valhalla stuff quite a bit and some other UAD reverbs, like the [Capitol] Chambers. I often just use Valhalla VintageVerb and the [Avid] Black Spring and simple things."
In some instances, the final mix ended up being the never-bettered rough mix, while other songs took far more work. "'cardigan' is basically the rough, as is `seven'. So, like the early, early mixes, when we didn't even know we were mixing, we never were able to make it better. Like if you make it sound 'good', it might not be as good 'cause it loses some of its weird magic, y'know. But songs like `the last great american dynasty' or 'mad woman', those songs were a little harder to create the dynamics the way you want them, and the pay-off without going too far, and with also just keeping in the kind of aesthetic that we were in. Those were harder, I would say.
"On evermore, I would say 'willow' was probably the hardest one to finish just because there were so many ways it could've gone. Eventually we settled back almost to the point where it began. So, there's a lot of stuff that was left out of 'willow', just because the simplicity of the idea I think was in a way the strongest."
The subject of this month's Inside Track article, 'willow' was the first song written for evermore, immediately following the release of folklore. "It almost felt like a dare or something," Dessner laughs. "We were writing, recording and mixing all in one kind of work stream and we went from one record to the other almost immediately. We were just sort off to the races. We didn't really ever stop since April."
Rubber & Vinyl
Sometimes, Dessner and Swift drew inspiration from unlikely sources; `no body, no crime', for instance, started when he gave her a 'rubber bridge' guitar made by Reuben Cox of the Old Style Guitar Shop in LA. "He's my very old friend," says Dessner of Cox. "He buys undervalued vintage guitars. Stuff that was made in the '50s and '60s as sort of learner guitars, like old Silvertones and Kays and Harmonys. These kinds of guitars which now are quite special, but they're still not valued the same way that vintage Fenders or Gibsons are valued. Then, he customizes them.
"Recently he started retrofitting these guitars with a rubber bridge and flatwound strings. He'll take, like, an acoustic Silvertone from 1958 and put a bridge on it that's covered in this kind of rubber that deadens the strings, so it really has this kind of dead thrum to it. And he puts two pickups in there, one that's more distorted and one that's cleaner. They're just incredible guitars. I thought Taylor would enjoy having one 'cause she loves the sound. So, I had Reuben make one for her and she used it to write `no body, no crime'."
Another friend of Dessner's, Ryan Olsen, has developed a piece of software called the Allovers Hi-Hat Generator which helped create the unusual harmonic loops that feature on `marjorie'. "It's not available on the market," Dessner says of the software. "It's just something that he uses personally, but I think hopefully eventually it'll come out. I wouldn't say it's artificial intelligence software but there's something very intelligent about it [laughs]. It basically analyses audio information and is able to separate audio into identifiable samples and then put them into a database. You then can design parameters for it to spit out sequences that are incredibly musical.
"When Ryan comes here, he'll just take all kinds of things that I give him and run it through there and then it'll spit out, like, three hours of stuff. Then I go through it and find the layers that I love, then I loop them. You can hear it also on the song 'happiness', the drumming in the background. It's not actually played. That's drums that have been sampled and then re-analyzed and re-sequenced out of this Allovers Hi-Hat Generator."
The song `marjorie' is named after Swift's opera-singer grandmother and so, fittingly, her voice can be heard flitting in and out of the mix at the end of the track. "Taylor's family gave us a bunch of recordings of her grandmother," Dessner explains. "But they were from old, very scratchy, noisy vinyl. So, we had to denoise it all using [iZotope's] RX and then I went in and I found some parts that I thought might work. I pitch-shifted them into the key and then placed them. It took a while to find the right ones, but it's really beautiful to be able to hear her. It's just an incredibly special thing, I think."
Meet At The Pond
Taylor Swift finally managed to get together with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in September 2020 for the filming of folklore: the long pond studio sessions, featuring the trio live-performing the album. It also provided an opportunity for Swift to add her vocals to some of the evermore tracks.
"It did allow us to have more fun, I think," says Dessner. "Y'know, drink more wine and just kinda be in the same place and have the feeling of blasting the music here and dancing around and just enjoying ourselves. She's really a lovely person to hang out with, so in that sense I'm glad that we had that chance to work together in person.
"We were using a [Telefunken] U47 to record Taylor here," he adds. "Either we were using one of the Siemens preamps on the board, which are amazing. Or I have Neve 1064s [preamps/EQs] and we use a Lisson Grove [AR-i] tube compressor generally."
One entirely new song, `tis the damn season', came out of this face-to-face approach, which Swift wrote in the middle of the night after the team had stayed up late drinking. "We had a bunch of wine actually," Dessner laughs, "and then everybody went to sleep, I thought. But I think she must have had this idea swimming around in her head, 'cause the next morning when she arrived, she sang 'Us the damn season' for me in my kitchen. It's maybe my favourite song we've written together. Then she sang it at dinner for me and my wife Stine and we were all crying. It’s just that kind of a song, so it was quite special.”
National Unity
One key track on evermore, 'coney island', features all of the members of the National and sees Swift duetting with their singer Matt Berninger. "My brother [Bryce] actually originated that song," says Aaron Dessner. "I sent him a reference at one point - I can't remember what it was - and then he was sort of inspired to write that chord progression. Then we worked together to sort of develop it and I wrote a bunch of parts and we structured it.
"Taylor and William Bowery [the songwriting pseudonym of Swift's boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn] wrote 'coney island' and she sang a beautiful version. It felt kind of done, actually. But then I think we all collectively thought, Taylor and myself and Bryce, like this was the closest to a National song."
Dessner then asked the brothers who make up the National's rhythm section, drummer Bryan and bassist Scott Devendorf, to play on 'coney island'. Matt Berninger, as he often does with the band's own tracks, recorded his vocal at home in Los Angeles. "It was never in the same place, it was done remotely," says Dessner, "except Bryan was here at Long Pond when he played. It was great to collaborate as a band with Taylor."
No Compromise
folklore and evermore have been both enormous critical and commercial successes for Taylor Swift. Aaron Dessner reckons that making these anti-pop records has freed the singer up for the future. "I think it was very liberating for her," he says. "I think that's the thing that's been probably the biggest change for her has just been being able to make songs without compromise and then release them without the promotional requirements that she's used to from the past. Obviously, it comes at this time when we're all in lockdown and nobody can tour or go on talk shows or anything. But I think for her probably it will impact what she does in the future.
"But I also think she can shapeshift again," he concludes. "Who knows where she'll go? She's had many celebrated albums from the past, but to release two albums of this quality in such a short time, it really did shine a light on her songwriting talent and her storytelling ability and also just her willingness to experiment and collaborate. Somehow, I ended up in the middle of all that and I'm very grateful."
INSIDE TRACK - Jonathan Low: Secrets of the Mix Engineers
Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Paul Tingen
From sketches to final mixes, engineer Jonathan Low spent 2020 overseeing Taylor Swift’s hit lockdown albums folklore and evermore.
“I think the theme of a lot of my work nowadays, and especially with these two records, is that everything is getting mixed all the time. I always try to get the songs to sound as finalised as they can be. Obviously that’s hard when you’re not sure yet what all the elements will be. Tracks morph all the time, and yet everything is always moving forwards towards completion in some way. Everything should sound fun and inspiring to listen to all the time.”
Speaking is Jonathan Low, and the two records he refers to are, of course, Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore, both of which reached number one in the UK and the US. Swift’s main producer and co‑writer on the two albums was the National’s Aaron Dessner, also interviewed in this issue. Low is the engineer, mixer and general right‑hand man at Long Pond Studios in upstate New York, where he and Dessner spent most of 2020 working on folklore and evermore, with Swift in Los Angeles for much of the time.
“In the beginning it did not feel real,” recalls Low. “There was this brand‑new collaboration, and it was amazing how quickly Aaron made these instrumental sketches and Taylor wrote lyrics and melodies to them, which she initially sent to us as iPhone voice memos. During our nightly family dinners in lockdown, Aaron would regularly pull up his phone and say, ‘Listen to this!’ and there would be another voice memo from Taylor with this beautiful song that she had written over a sketch of Aaron’s in a matter of hours. The rate at which it was happening was mind‑blowing. There was constant elevation, inspiration and just wanting to continue the momentum.
“We put her voice memos straight into Pro Tools. They had tons of character, because of the weird phone compression and cutting midrange quality you just would not get when you put someone in front of a pristine recording chain. Plus there was all this bleed. It’s interesting how that dictates the attitude of the vocal and of the song. Even though none of the original voice memos ended up on the albums, they often gave us unexpected hints. These voice memos were such on‑a‑whim things, they were really telling. Taylor had certain phrasings and inflections that we often returned to later on. They became our reference points.”
Pond Life
The making of the National’s 2017 album Sleep Well Beast and the setup at Long Pond were covered in SOS October 2017; today the studio remains pretty much the same, with the exception of a new desk. “The main space is really big, and the console sits in the middle,” says Low. “In 2019, I installed a 1965 WSW/Siemens, which has 24 line‑in and microphone channels and another 24 line channels. WSW is the Austrian branch of Siemens usually built for broadcast. It’s loaded with 811510B channels. The build quality is insane, the switches and pots feel like they were made yesterday. To me it hints at the warm haze of a Class‑A Neve channel but sits further forward in the speakers. The midrange band on the passive EQ is a huge part of its charm, it really does feel like you’re changing the tone of the actual source rather than the recording. Most microphones go through the desk on their way into Pro Tools, though we sometimes use outboard Neve 1064 mic pres. Occasionally I use the Siemens to sum a mix.
“We have a pair of ATC SCM45 monitors, which sound very clear in the large room. The ceiling is very high, and the front wall is about 25 feet behind the monitors. There are diffusers on the sidewalls and the back walls are absorbing, so there are very few reflections. Aaron and I will be listening in tons of different ways. I’ll listen in my home studio with similar ATC SCM20 monitors or on my ‘70s Marantz hi‑fi setup. Aaron is always checking things in his car, and if there’s something that is bugging him, I’ll join him in his car to find out what he hears.”
Low works at Long Pond and with Dessner most of the time, though he does find time to do other projects, among hem this last year the War On Drugs, Waxahatchee and Nap Eyes. When lockdown started in Spring 2020, Low tacked up on supplies and "had a bunch f mixes lined up". Meanwhile, on the Eest Coast, Swift had seen her Lover Fest our cancelled. With help from engineer aura Sisk, she set up a makeshift studio which she dubbed Kitty Committee in bedroom in her Los Angeles home, and began working with long-term producer nd co-writer Jack Antonoff. At the end of April, however, Swift also started working with Dessner, which took the project in different direction. The impressionistic, atmospheric, electro-folk instrumentals Dessner sent her were mostly composed nd recorded by him at Long Pond, assisted by Low.
Sketching Sessions
The instrumental sketches Aaron makes come into being in different ways," elaborates Low. "Sometimes they are more fleshed-out ideas, sometimes they are less formed. But normally Aaron will set himself up in the studio, surrounded by instruments and synths, and he'll construct a track. Once he feels it makes some kind of sense I'll come in and take a listen and then we together develop what's there.
"I don't call his sketches demos, because while many instruments are added and replaced later on, most of the original parts end up in the final version of the song. We end up in the final version of the song. We try to get the sketches to a place where they are already very engaging as instrumental are already very engaging as instrumental tracks. Aaron and I are always obsessively listening, because we constantly want to hear things that feel inspiring and musical, not just a bed of music in the background. It takes longer to create, but in this case also gave Taylor more to latch onto, both emotionally and in terms of musical inspiration. Hearing melodies woven in the music triggered new melodies."
Not long after Dessner and Low sent each sketch to Swift, they would receive her voice memos in return, and they'd load them into the Pro Tools session of the sketch in question. Dessner and Low then continued to develop the songs, in close collaboration with Swift. "Taylor's voice memos often came with suggestions for how to edit the sketches: maybe throw in a bridge somewhere, shorten a section, change the chords or arrangement somewhere, and so on. Aaron would have similar ideas, and he then developed the arrangements, often with his brother Bryce, adding or replacing instruments. This happened fast, and became very interactive between us and Taylor, even though we were working remotely. When we added instruments, we were reacting to the way my rough mixes felt at the very beginning. Of course, it was also dictated by how Taylor wrote and sang to the tracks."
Dessner supplied sketches for nine and produced 10 of folklore's 16 songs, playing many different types of guitars, keyboards and synths as well as percussion and programmed drums. Instruments that were added later include live strings, drums, trombone, accordion, clarinet, harpsichord and more, with his brother Bryce doing many of the orchestrations. Most overdubs by other musicians were done remotely as well. Throughout, Low was keeping an overview of everything that was going on and mixing the material, so it was as presentable and inspiring as possible.
Mixing folklore
Although Dessner has called folklore an "anti-pop album", the world's number-one pop mixer Serban Ghenea was drafted in to mix seven tracks, while Low did the remainder.
"It was exciting to have Serban involved," explains Low, "because he did things I'd never do or be able to do. The way the vocal sits always at the forefront, along with the clarity he gets in his mixes, is remarkable. A great example of this is on the song 'epiphany'. There is so much beautiful space and the vocal feels effortlessly placed. It was really interesting to hear where he took things, because we were so close to the entire process in every way. Hearing a totally new perspective was eye-opening and refreshing.
"Throughout the entire process we were trying to maintain the original feel. Sometimes this was hard, because that initial rawness would get lost in large arrangements and additional layering. With revisions of folklore in particular we sometimes were losing the emotional weight from earlier more casual mixes. Because I was always mixing, there was also always the danger of over-mixing.
"We were trying to get the best of each mix version, and sometimes that meant stepping backwards, and grabbing a piano chain from an earlier mix, or going three versions back to before we added orchestration. There were definitely moments of thinking, 'Is this going to compete sonically? Is this loud enough?' We knew we loved the way the songs sounded as we were building them, so we stuck with what we knew. There were times where I tried to keep pushing a mix forward but it didn't improve the song — 'cardigan' is an example of a song where we ended up choosing a very early mix."
The Low Down
"I'm originally from Philadelphia," says Jonathan Low, "and played piano, alto saxophone and guitar when growing up. My dad is an electrical engineer and audiophile hobbyist, and I learned a lot about circuit design and how to repair things. I then started building guitar pedals and guitar amps, and recorded bands at my high school using a minidisc player and some binaural microphones. After that I did a music industry programme at Drexel University, and spent a lot of time working at the recording facilities there.
"This led to me meeting Brian McTear, a producer and owner of Miner Street Studios, which became my home base from 2009 to 2014. I learned a lot from him, from developing an interest in creating sounds in untraditional ways, to how to see a record through to completion. The studio has a two-inch 16-track Ampex MM1200 tape machine and a beautiful MCI 400 console which very quickly shaped the way I think about routing and signal flow. I'm lucky to have learned this way, because a computer environment is like the Wild West: there are no rules in terms of how to get from point A to point B. This flexibility is incredible, but sometimes there are simply too many options.
"l met Aaron [Dessned] because singer-songwriter Sharon van Etten recorded her second album, Epic [2010] at Miner Street, with Brian producing. Her third album, Tramp [2012] was produced by Aaron. They came to Philly to record drums and I ended up mixing a bunch of that record. After that I would occasionally go to work in Aaron's garage studio in Brooklyn, and this became more and more a regular collaboration. I then moved from Philly up to the Hudson Valley to help Aaron build Long Pond. We first used the studio in the spring of 2016, when beginning to record the National's album Sleep Well Beast."
Onward & Upward
folklore was finished and released in July 2020. In a normal world everyone might have gone on to do other things, but without the option of touring, they simply continued writing songs, with Low holding the fort. In September, many of the musicians who played on the album gathered at Long Pond for the shooting of a making-of documentary, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is streamed on Disney+.
The temporary presence of Swift at Long Pond changed the working methods somewhat, as she could work with Dessner in the room, and Low was able record her vocals. After Swift left again, sessions continued until December, when evermore was released, with Dessner producing or co-producing all tracks, apart from 'gold rush' which was co-written and co-produced by Swift and Antonoff. Low recorded many of Swift's vocals for evermore, and mixed the entire album. The lead single 'willow' became the biggest hit from the album, reaching number one in the US and number three in the UK.
"Before Taylor came to Long Pond," remembers Low, "she had always recorded her vocals for folklore remotely in Los Angeles or Nashville. When I recorded, I used a modern Telefunken U47, which is our go-to vocal mic — we record all the National stuff with that — going straight into the Siemens desk, and then into a Lisson Grove AR-1 tube compressor, and via a Burl A-D converter into Pro Tools. Taylor creates and lays down her vocal arrangements very quickly, and it sounds like a finished record in very few takes."
Devils In The Detail
In his mixes, Low wanted listeners to share his own initial response to these vocal performances. "The element that draws me in is always Taylor's vocals. The first time I received files with her properly recorded but premixed vocals I was just floored. They sounded great, even with minimal EQ and compression. They were not the way I'm used to hearing her voice in her pop songs, with the vocal soaring and sitting at the very front edge of the soundscape. In these raw performances, I heard so much more intimacy and interaction with the music. It was wonderful to hear her voice with tons of detail and nuances in place: her phrasing, her tonality, her pitch, all very deliberate. We wanted to maintain that. It's more emotional, and it sounds so much more personal to me. Then there was the music..."
The arrangements on evermore are even more 'chamber pop' than on folklore, with instruments like glockenspiel, crotales, flute, French horn, celeste and harmonium in evidence. "As listeners of the National may know, Aaron's and Bryce's arrangements can be quite dense. They love lush orchestration, all sorts of percussion, synths and other electronic sounds. The challenge was trying to get them to speak, without getting in the way of the vocals. I want a casual listener to be drawn in by the vocal, but sense that something special is happening in the music as well. At the same time, someone who really is digging in can fully immerse themselves and take in all the beauty deeper in the details of the sound and arrangement. Finding the balance between presenting all the musical elements that were happening in the arrangement and this really beautiful, upfront, real-sounding vocal was the ticket."
A particular challenge is that a lot of the detail that Aaron gravitates towards happens in the low mids, which is a very warm part of our hearing spectrum that can quickly become too muddy or too woolly. A lot of the tonal and musical information lives in the low mids, and then the vocal sits more in the midrange and high mids. There's not too much in the higher frequency range, except the top of the guitars, and some elements like a shaker and the higher buzzy parts of the synths. Maintaining clarity and separation in those often complex arrangements was a major challenge."
In & Out The Box
According to Low, the final mix stage for evermore was "very short. There was a moment in the final week or so leading up to the release where the songs were developed far enough for me to sit down and try to make something very cohesive and final, finalising vocal volume, overall volume, and the vibe. There's a point in every mix where the moves get really small. When a volume ride of 0.1dB makes a difference, you're really close to being done. Earlier on, those little adjustments don't really matter.
"I often try to mix at the console, with some outboard on the two-bus, but folklore was mixed all in the box, because we were working so fast, plus initially the plan was for the mixes to be done elsewhere. I ran a couple of mixes for evermore through the console, and `closure' was the only one that stuck. It was summed through the Siemens, with an API 2500 compressor and a Thermionic Culture Phoenix and then back into Pro Tools via the Burl A-D. I will use hardware when mixing in the box, though mainly just two units: the Eventide H3000, because I have not found any plug-ins that do the same thing, and the [Thermionic] Culture Vulture, for its very broad tone shaping and distortion properties.
"The writing and the production happened closely in conjunction with the engineering and mixing, and the arrangements were dense, making many of the sessions super hefty and actually quite messy. Sounds would constantly change roles in the arrangement and sometimes plug-ins would just stack up. So final mixing involved cleaning up the sessions and stemming large groups down."
Across The Rubber Bridge
The Pro Tools mix session of 'willow' has close to 100 tracks, though there's none of the elaborate bussing that's the hallmark of some modern sessions. At the top are six drum machine tracks in green from the Teenage Engineering OP-1, an instrument that was used extensively on the album. Below that are five live percussion tracks (blue), three bass tracks (pink), and an `AUX Drums' programming track. There's a 'rubber bridge' guitar folder and aux, OP-1 synth tracks, piano tracks, 'Dream Machine' (Josh Kaufman's guitar) and E-bow tracks, Yamaha, Sequential Prophet X, Moog and Roland Juno synth tracks, and Strings and Horns aux stem tracks.
"Most of the drum tracks were performed on the OP-1 by Aaron. These are not programmed tracks. Bryan Devendorf, drummer of the National, programmed some beats on a Roland TR-8S. I ran those though the Fender Rumble bass amp, which adds some woofiness, like an acoustic kit room mic. There's an acoustic shaker, and there's an OP-1 backbeat that's subtle in the beginning, and then gets stronger towards the end of the song. I grouped all the drum elements and the bass, and sent those out to a hardware insert with the Culture Vulture, for saturation, so it got louder and more and more harmonically rich. There is this subtle growing and crescendo of intensity of the rhythm section by the end.
"The 'rubber bridge' guitars were the main anchor in the instruments. These guitars have a wooden bridge wrapped in rubber, and sound a bit like a nylon-string guitar, or a light palm mute. They're very percussive and sound best when recorded on our Neumann U47 and a DI. On many of those DI tracks I have a [SPL] Transient Designer to lower the sustain and keep them punchy, especially in the low end. There's a folder with five takes of 'rubber bridge' guitar in this session, creating this wall of unique guitar sound.
"I treated the 'rubber bridge' guitars quite extensively. There's a FabFilter Pro-Q3 cutting some midrange frequencies and some air around 10kHz. These guitars can splash out in the high end and have a boominess that's in the same range as the low end of Taylor's vocal, so I had to keep these things under control. Then I used a SoundToys Tremolator, with a quarter-note tremolo that makes the accents in the playing a bit more apparent. I like to get the acoustic guitars a little bit out of the way for the less important beats, so I have the Massey CT5 compressor side-chained to the kick drum. I also used the UAD Precision K-Stereo to make the guitars a bit wider. The iZotope Ozone Exciter adds some high mids and high-end harmonic saturation sparkly stuff, and the SoundToys EchoBoy delay is automated, with it only coming on in the bridge, where I wanted more ambience."
Growing Pains
"Once we had figured out how to sit the 'rubber bridge' guitars in the mix, the next challenge was to work out the end of the song, after the bridge. Taylor actually goes down an octave with her voice in the last chorus, and at the same time the music continues to push and grow. That meant using a lot of automation and Clip Gain adjustment to make sure the vocal always stayed on top. There also are ambient pianos playing counter-melodies, and balancing the vocals, guitars and pianos was the main focus on this song. We spent a lot of time balancing this, particularly as the track grows towards the end.
"The vocal tracks share many of the same plug-ins and settings. On the main lead vocal track I added the UAD Pultec EQP-1A, with a little bit of a cut in the low end at 30Hz, and a boost at 8kHz, which adds some modern air. The second plug-in is the Oeksound Soothe, which is just touching the vocal, and it helps with any harsh resonance stuff in the high mids, and a little in the lower mids. Next is the UAD 1176AE, and then the FabFilter Pro-Q3, doing some notches at 200Hz, 1kHz, 4kHz and close to 10kHz. I tend to do subtractive EQ on the Q3, and use more analogue-sounding plug-ins, like the Pultec or the Maag, to boost. After that is the FabFilter Pro-DS [de-esser], taking off a couple of decibels, followed by the FabFilter Saturn 2 [saturation processor], on a warm tape setting.
"Below the vocal tracks are three aux effects tracks, for the vocals. 'Long Delay' has a stereo EchoBoy going into an Altiverb with a spring reverb, for effect throws in the choruses. 'Chamber' is the UAD Capitol Chamber, which gives the vocal a nice density and size, without it being a long reverb. The 'Plate' aux is the UAD EMT140, for the longer tail. These two reverbs work in conjunction, with the chamber for the upfront space, determining where the vocal sits in the mix, and the plate more for the depth behind that.
"At the bottom of the session is a two-bus aux, which mimics the way I do the two-bus on the desk. The plug-ins are the UAD Massive Passive EQ, UAD API 2500 compressor, and the UAD Ampex ATR102. Depending on the song, I will choose 15ips or 30ips. In this case it was set to 15ips, half-inch GP9. That has a nice, aggressive, midrange push, and the GP9 bottom end goes that little bit lower. There's also a PSP Vintage Warmer, a Sonnox Oxford Inflator, plus a FabFilter Pro-L2 [limiter]. None of these things are doing very much on their own, but in conjunction give me the interaction I expect from an analogue mix chain."
#Aaron Dessner#bryce dessner#Jonathan Low#the long pond studio sessions#making of#folklore album#evermore album#interview#about taylor#taylor swift#songwriting#producer#evermore era#folklore era#Sound on Sound Magazine#scans
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SELENA GOMEZ - LOSE YOU TO LOVE ME
[6.17]
We like it like a lose song, maybe...
Alex Clifton: I'm fascinated by songs where singers air their grievances and fans all know which specific people they are calling out. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with Taylor Swift's music way back in the day; I love a good gossip. Over the past eight years, I've worried about Selena with relation to Justin Bieber constantly. Not my relationship, I know, but he seemed like an immature asswipe when Selena could do much better. She's avoided discussing Bieber in much of her previous music. Even the songs that were definitely about him ("Love Will Remember," "The Heart Wants What It Wants") were written in abstract terms so you'd only really know the subject if you spent time following the Selena/Justin drama. Cut to "Lose You to Love Me," where she goes for the kill: "in two months you replaced us," a clear reference to Justin suddenly moving onto his now-wife Hailey. Such a vulnerable and specific track is a strong statement from Selena, who in the past two years has stayed relatively out of the public eye and is now ready to share parts of her story. There's no red scarf here, not that level of minutiae, but frankly she doesn't need it when much of her toxic and turbulent relationship with Bieber played out in the tabloids. And god it's so cathartic. It's an acknowledgement of hurt and anger but a phoenix move for Selena; she's rising from the debris stronger than before, and she wants you to know it. I'm so pleased for her. In the immortal words of her friend Taylor, "she lost him but she found herself and somehow that was everything."
[8]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: A decade into her career as one of the world's most popular artists, it's worth noting that Selena Gomez's ascent to fame was improbable. She didn't have the most powerful voice, dance skills, or even a number one hit -- but especially early in her career, she was able to leverage her very public personal life to fuel interest in her music: a Disney fan base, a feud with Demi Lovato which the media loved to cover, membership in Taylor Swift's entourage, and, of course, most significantly, an infamous on-and-off-again relationship. But over the past four years, Selena has developed an effective signature vocal style -- hushed, controlled whispers which burst into moments of pop brilliance -- which makes it clear that her music is more than capable of standing on her own. So it's all the more frustrating then, that after seeing how stellar her music can be removed from celebrity context, that the first song we get off her long awaited third solo album is yet another song about Justin Bieber. But while I initially rejected "Lose You to Love Me" as a regression into formulaic pop balladry, there's a surprising amount of depth. The song sounds like genuine healing, coming from an artist singing her truth. Her voice is soft but powerful, emotive but not overwrought, reflective but not nostalgic. A line like "now the chapter is closed and done" could land cliché and hollow, but Selena sings it like someone who finally took a breath of fresh air for the first time in years. This is all to say: if we have to listen to this one last song about Justin Bieber, at least it's the first genuinely compelling one, and a step in seeing her evolution as an artist and celebrity.
[7]
Leah Isobel: When Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake broke up, he got to project his messy breakup feelings outward; he produced imagery about spying on her doppelganger and fantasizing about her death. But for Selena -- Timberlake's 2010s tabloid counterpart -- unrepentant sleaze is a much riskier proposition, at least on the charts. Instead, she sublimates her anger, returning to the baby-voiced Julia Michaels wheelhouse. The mass of vocal effects on the chorus is surprisingly effective, but for an artist who was briefly one of the more progressive voices on Top 40 radio, this defanged "Everytime" is a little disappointing.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Piano ballads are to music what Joseph Campbell is to narratives. Not a song but a beat on a storyboard -- barely a storyboard, even, but tabloid kerfuffle.
[1]
Michael Hong: Selena Gomez's career has long mirrored Demi Lovato's, from child acting stints on Barney & Friends to the release of their fifth studio albums within a week of each other in 2015. Here she goes for something similar to Lovato's "Sober," released last year as a sort of song-as-a-statement -- though Gomez's statement is more uplifting than heartbreaking. "Sober" was a rare instance where Lovato never pushed her voice too far, with its statement made more effective by the events that followed; her confession came across as authentically personal as it unfolded in real-time. "Lose You to Love Me," like "Sober," is stripped down to its bare bones for a more intimate feeling, but here, it's questionable whether the quiet dynamic is one of Gomez's stylistic choices or a symptom of her limited vocal range. There are interesting touches, like the echo-chamber effect on her voice for the line "in two months, you replaced us," which makes the following lines about being broken all the more devastating. But there are also moments like the choir vocals on the final chorus that are predictably overwrought. While "Lose You to Love Me" is a delicately gorgeous and uplifting track, its statement is diminished by how tiresome the Gomez-Bieber narrative feels. We're no longer watching her relationship end in the present, but instead seeing Selena Gomez finally claim closure on a relationship that has long since run its course (at least in the public eye). More interesting is the single released the following day, which features the offbeat personality she's carved out for herself over the past few years and is equally effective at demonstrating that Selena Gomez has moved on.
[6]
Alfred Soto: In a tradition of self-reflexive love songs, she tells us she'll sing the chorus off-key (it sounds okay to me). Maybe this line represents one of Selena Gomez's contributions. If I see Julia Michaels, I think of phony uplift, of which the chorus has hints. Then Gomez counters with a slightly hoarse, un-melodramatic dropping of the line, "You promised the world and I fell for it. A performance with grandness in its bones, and it almost succeeds.
[6]
Stephen Eisermann: I'm a sucker for big, cathartic choruses, but the verses really let me down here. Between Selena's weird vocal, the melodramatic strings, and the unintentionally funny lyrics (I'm not convinced that the whole singing off-key line isn't a bit that she's delivering with a wink), it's really hard to take the track seriously. But when that big booming chorus hits, backing vocals and all, you can almost feel Selena letting go of everything Bieber did to her. And that, that's lovely. It's also why the other track released after this is so much better.
[5]
Joshua Copperman: A song that's perfectly in tune with 2019-type sad music yet unafraid to be huge. It doesn't have the stakes of "Praying" or the bounce of "It Ain't Me," but that's not a problem. The gang vocals that plagued so much of mid-to-late 2010s pop -- including Selena Gomez's own music -- blossom into a full choir, beautifully contrasting with her usual hushiness. It should be Real Music-y --even the lyrics are less playful and twee than Michaels and Tranter usually go, barring the "killing me softly" shoehorn and obvious title -- but because of how thin Gomez's voice sounds, it's not. (The most Michaels-y touch is the backing vocals going "to love, to love" instead of "to love me, love me" like I'd thought, as in "I needed to lose you to love again at all.") The pop most beloved non-mainstream artists are producing is proudly campy, and that's great! Gomez seems to be headed in that direction too with "Look at Her Now," but this unexpected pivot to pathos inexplicably works thanks to the strategic arrangement and lyricism.
[9]
Kayla Beardslee: It's fascinatingly difficult to determine where Julia Michaels' style ends and Selena Gomez's begins, and the whispered melodies and "Issues" violins here don't help. Although Gomez's voice can sometimes be aggressively pleasant, she digs in enough to communicate real emotion here, and the choir backing vocals are surprisingly powerful. The song makes a poignant, if heavy-handed, statement about maturing and finding your identity, amplified by this being her comeback single: Ariana has "thank u, next," Miley has "Slide Away," and now Selena has "Lose You to Love Me."
[7]
Jackie Powell: While Julia Michaels has commented that Selena Gomez is indeed a songwriter, I still don't believe that's the proper term to describe her contributions to music. Gomez is a storyteller first and foremost. That's the term: storyteller. Sometimes those can be interpreted as synonymous or givens of each other, but let's remember that Gomez has been telling stories since she was seven years old. Her art is most successful when she's in control of her narrative and knows exactly what story she's about to tell. When she has the opportunity to perform her stories, she goes all out and sells it exactly as someone who's been on stage since childhood can. That may sound like something Ariana Grande has done in the past year or so with "thank u, next," since both "Lose You to Love Me" and that highlight some of the most dramatic breakups in pop culture. But as Tatiana Cirisano pointed out for Billboard, Gomez's approach is the contrapositive to Grande's. Both cuts are relatable and have a commitment to empowerment and autonomy, but Gomez makes her track a moment without a teen movie pastiche. Her choice to emphasize and crescendo on the lyrics "In two months you replaced us" and "Made me think I deserved it" speak loudly. This track is all about its dynamics in its minimalistic glory. Imagine Gomez was performing a monologue. That's the type of choice a storyteller makes. Justin Tranter and Michaels provide the melody and the nuts and bolts, but the concept is clearly all Gomez. The backing vocals in each chorus from Tranter and Michaels are symbolic of what they've meant to Gomez over the years. They've been by her side every step of the way and have lifted her up. That's beautiful. What's also beautiful is if I ever wanted to learn more about Justin Bieber, the lyrics "Sang off-key in my chorus / 'Cause it wasn't yours" tell me all I need to know.
[8]
Josh Buck: The Selena Gomez x Julia Michaels joints never miss.
[6]
Abdullah Siddiqui: Selena Gomez's discography in the last four years has largely consisted of stylistic meandering and incomplete ideas. She hasn't quite been able to settle on a sound or a narrative. This feels like she's starting from scratch. It's a pretty solid place to start.
[7]
[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]
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Kelly Clarkson moves to daytime talk, and her 3-year-old wants in
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Kelly Clarkson, musician and the first American Idol, dishes on the inspiration behind her new talk show and growing up watching Oprah.
Harrison Hill, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES – As a recent taping of “The Kelly Clarkson Show” begins, the three-time Grammy winner emerges from behind the bank of audience seats, performing Heart’s “Alone” while walking through rows of cheering fans.
Clarkson even stops to let one join in before making her way down to the center of the airy, comfy set, closing the tune with a trademark power riff. She then calls out to a woman in the audience wearing a “Meaning of Life” shirt, the title of her eighth studio album and most recent concert tour.
The interactive musical opening plays to the first “American Idol” winner’s strength, but she embraces it more for familiarity than as a branding maneuver.
“Honestly, the singing at the beginning of every show was more for me to be comfortable. I’ve done it for a decade on tour. And I’ve been covering songs forever. Obviously, I’m from “Idol” – Hi! Sang covers the whole time. It’s what got me here, so it’s what I’m going to be doing on the way out,” she says, laughing.
‘Idol’ musings: New talk host Kelly Clarkson recalls ‘bitterness’ she felt after winning ‘American Idol’
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Kelly Clarkson’s talk show, focused on “humor, heart and connection,” premieres Monday. (Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY)
“Clarkson,” focused on “humor, heart and connection,” features a guest panel that mixes celebrities and regular people with uplifting stories.
A-list movie star Dwayne Johnson headlines Monday’s premiere, which also features an Oregon woman who runs a community food pantry. Other first-week guests include Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Garner, John Legend, Jay Leno and Chance the Rapper.
Clarkson approvingly cites the unpredictable guest matchups on “The Graham Norton Show” as inspiration: “He always sets you up with just the most random characters that you would never find in one place. I think that’s really clever, and it breaks down walls when (guests) are nervous.”
To the likely disappointment of some fans, Clarkson, who has sold more than 25 million albums and is known for such hits as “Miss Independent” and “Because of You,” won’t be opening each show with her own songs.
Swift backing: Kelly Clarkson’s advice to Taylor Swift: Re-record old songs so fans won’t pay Scooter Braun
Kelly Clarkson opens a recent taping of ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show’ by performing Heart’s ‘Alone.’ (Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY)
“I think it’d be a genuinely tool thing, me singing my own music. They’re all covers. … I like doing songs people love to sing to,” says the singer, whose show band is the same one she tours with. “At Christmastime, I might sing something from my Christmas record. Or if we’re releasing a new single, I might sing something as a surprise.”
Clarkson, 37, displays an engaging, natural enthusiasm that bubbles up in conversation, as with the interjected “Hi!” or when she briefly interrupts an on-set interview to quiet her crew – “Hey, guys, I love you, but this is on camera!” – and later calls out her husband and manager, Brandon Blackstock, for playing a video on his phone at the other end of the set.
Kelly Clarkson lets a Heart fan chime in on ‘Alone’ during a recent taping of ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show,’ a nationally syndicated talk show that premieres Sept. 9. (Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY)
The talk show allows room for Clarkson’s digressions and improvisations, even her glitches (“Oh, my gosh. I’m an idiot,” she says during the taping, after one inconsequential error). They convey a charm that has helped her connect with fans throughout her music career and, more recently, her time as a coach on NBC’s “The Voice,” to which she returns for Season 17 on Sept. 23.
Clarkson’s engaging “Voice” presence suggested her potential as the host of her own show, which is produced by NBC and will air on many of the network’s owned stations.
Coaching decision: John Legend, Kelly Clarkson say goodbye to Adam Levine as he exits ‘The Voice’
Kelly Clarkson takes the stage at her new talk show, which includes some audience seats positioned very close to the host and her guests. (Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY)
“I always say she’s one of us in a way that so many celebrities aren’t, because we chose her,” says executive producer Alex Duda, referring to Clarkson’s talent-show roots. “Even though she’s a big superstar, we all feel like she’s our best friend. That’s the best combination of qualities for a daytime host. She’s like a jazz artist. She brings all the humor, all her personality and infuses it into the basic melody we give her.”
Approachability is key to the appeal of Clarkson, who recently relocated to Los Angeles from Tennessee with Blackstock and their children: River Rose, 5, and Remington, 3. (She’s also the stepmother of Blackstock’s children, Seth and Savannah.)
“My youngest daughter has already asked me if she can be on the show,” she says.
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Kelly Clarkson, left, and Blake Shelton will be two of the coaches on Season 17 of NBC’s ‘The Voice.’ (Photo: NBC, NBC)
Clarkson, who worked as a cocktail waitress in her hometown of Burleson, Texas, before becoming at star at 20, had been singing since childhood and knew music, but daytime talk is a new and dramatic shift.
She felt some reassurance after twice hosting the Billboard Music Awards to positive reviews, which were only amplified after it was revealed that she worked the 2019 show suffering from appendicitis (She had an appendectomy the next day.).
Still, it took some persuading from Blackstock before she committed to daily show duty.
“I was very nervous about taking on something I hold a high bar to, all the (hosts) I love watching. I didn’t know how it would play out, and my husband convinced me. He said, ‘Look at all the stuff you love whenever you talk about Oprah, Ellen or Rosie O’Donnell back in the day, how they were able to do so many good things,’” she says. “There’s so much negativity, so much division (now). One of the main reasons I signed on is I wanted a place that was fun, joyful, had a lot of heart.”
Playing with pain: Kelly Clarkson is ‘feeling awesome’ after appendectomy following Billboard Music Awards
Kelly Clarkson, right, has plenty of familiarity with members of her house band, left. The musicians also are members of the band she travels with on concert tours. (Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY)
Going in, she knew she had at least part of the gig down pat.
“I knew I could talk. I don’t get nervous with people ever. I’m quite the extrovert. That’s not a surprise, I imagine, for anyone. I really genuinely love people. I’m a full-on tourist in that sense,” she says. “I’m very down to earth, and I think everybody’s very similar. We all just come in different packages and we all love different things. I like getting in there and finding that connection.”
Accident avoidance: Kelly Clarkson nearly face-plants on Indy 500 red carpet in sky-high heels
Kelly Clarkson finishes a song in close proximity to audience members on ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show.’ (Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY)
To provide more opportunities for the singer to interact with the audience, “Clarkson” includes familiar elements from her concerts. Audience members suggest cover songs, explaining their personal significance, and Clarkson leads “Kelly-oke” group singing sessions. The set design, which features guitars on the walls and wooden supports that resemble musical staffs, includes seats just feet from Clarkson and her guests, because she likes the close contact.
And while music is a signature component, the show will explore a broad range of topics, including family and motherhood.
Kelly Clarkson kisses her husband, Brandon Blackstock, at the 2019 Grammy Awards. (Photo: Dan MacMedan/USA TODAY)
“I love relating to other moms. It makes me feel good, because sometimes you feel like you’re epically failing and just treading water. And we’re all doing our best and trying our best,” she says.
Clarkson says she was nervous taping the pilot, but she’s already feeling more confident. And she’s not focused on the treacherous daytime landscape, which has in recent years claimed talk shows helmed by such high-profile names as Katie Couric, Harry Connick Jr., Meredith Vieira and Anderson Cooper.
“This is what’s weird about me. Ignorance is bliss. I’m just doing my thing. I love talking to people. I love singing. I love the audience being kind of a co-host with me. My band’s here,” she says. “So, I’m just kind of doing me. It might work and it might not.”
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Girl Rising, in Collaboration With International Rescue Committee, Citi, HP and Amplifier, Celebrates International Women’s Day With the Debut of BRAVE GIRL RISING, a Film Raising Awareness and Support for Refugee Girls Available Now on Youtube
Girl Rising, the nonprofit behind the global campaign for girls’ education and empowerment, debuts their newest film Brave Girl Rising online now at YouTube and https://girlrising.org. The 20-minute film marks its debut on International Women’s Day, today Friday, March 8. Written by a refugee, performed by refugees, and made in collaboration with refugees in one of the largest camps in the world, Brave Girl Rising is about how hope, love, and friendship can propel us beyond even the bleakest of circumstances.
This evening the West Hollywood City Council will honor the film in a special event hosted by Freida Pinto with performances by Warsan Shire, the first Young Poet Laureate of London (2014) and the poet behind Beyoncé’s Lemonade as well as American-Indian singer Gingger Shankar. The social change nonprofit Amplifier (the group that created the iconic We the People campaign) will roll out a national public art campaign to inspire action in support of refugee girls through special events, public art displays and free art giveaways at select locations across the country, and free high-resolution downloads of original artwork. The artist Ashley Lukashevsky created artwork inspired by the film, and the poster will be distributed at the event tonight and shared on social.
Brave Girl Rising, made in collaboration with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), tells the story of Nasro, a 17-year-old girl whose courageous drive to continue her education is inspired by the magical dreams of her mother and the sisterhood of her friends. Nasro arrived at Dadaab, one of the world’s largest refugee camps, when she was only 7 years old and is supported by IRC’s Women’s Protection and Empowerment program. The film is narrated by Tessa Thompson (Creed 2, Westworld, Thor, Men in Black: International), and Golden Globe winner David Oyelowo (Selma, Gringo, Queen of Katwe). Poet Warsan Shire incorporates elements of magic realism and moving poetry in the screenplay, which she wrote, based on hours of conversation with Nasro. The story weaves together true events from Nasro’s life and dreams, along with Shire’s own experiences as a refugee.
“We want to get people talking about the reality for refugee girls all over the globe, the barriers they face in securing basic human rights and the truly transformative power of education for girls living as refugees”, said Christina Lowery, CEO of Girl Rising. “We believe films like ours can turn bystanders into activists and we have seen first-hand the results of people who become engaged in the issue and are inspired to act.”
Nicole Behnam, IRC’s Senior Director of Violence Protection and Response said, “Adolescent girls are amongst the most marginalized populations on earth, and efforts to support and empower them are lifesaving, not optional. This film brings much-needed awareness to the challenges faced by women and girls in crisis and show the importance of prioritizing their safety, education and wellbeing.”
The global debut will be backed by a robust online advocacy toolkit and curriculum, made available in 7 subtitled languages and will become part of Girl Rising's local programs in India, Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, Guatemala, and the US. Brave Girl Rising also marks the expansion of Citi’s partnership with Girl Rising, serving as the Founding Partner of this project, the first in a new round of Girl Rising films and campaigns.
The premiere also marks the worldwide debut of the complete Girl Rising 10-part series on YouTube. Brave Girl Rising continues the storytelling that began with the original film Girl Rising; an innovative feature film about the power of girl’s education that featured the voices of Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Kerry Washington, and more. Girl Rising, named the #1 Most Dynamic Social Initiative (Forbes), “a social media marketing phenomenon” (The Daily Beast), and awarded the highest-to-date social impact score of 98/100 by Participant Media. They went on to launch the #62MillionGirls campaign with Michelle Obama, and in 2016 produced with Meryl Streep “We Will Rise,” a film about Michelle Obama’s mission to educate girls; now the most watched CNN Film of all time.
About Girl Rising
Girl Rising is a non-profit organization that creates powerful stories to change the way the world values girls -- stories about girls who face daunting barriers to their independence with determination and courage. These stories are the foundation of GR’s educational tools and curricula used in collaboration with local partners throughout the world -- tools that build confidence and agency in girls and change attitudes and social norms within their communities. Globally, GR continues to fuel and strengthen social movements to inform, engage and inspire the public to take action for girls and gender equality.
About IRC
The International Rescue Committee responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic well-being, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is at work in over 40 countries and 28 offices across the U.S. helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future, and strengthen their communities. Learn more at www.rescue.org and follow the IRC on Twitter & Facebook. The IRC helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future.
About Citi
Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.
About HP
HP Inc. creates technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere. Through our portfolio of printers, PCs, mobile devices, solutions, and services, we engineer experiences that amaze. More information about HP Inc. is available at http://www.hp.com.
About Amplifier
Amplifier is a design lab that builds art and media experiments to amplify the most important movements of our time. We design and distribute art that engages people in the creation of a more just, inclusive and sustainable future. Since 2015, we've worked with over 300 renowned artists, distributed over a million pieces of art and sent free artwork to hundreds of thousands of students across the united states and beyond. We are a 501c3 non-profit organization and are the folks behind the iconic We The People campaign and the Here Our Voice exhibition.
source: http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/41796-Girl-Rising-in-Collaboration-With-International-Rescue-Committee-Citi-HP-and-Amplifier-Celebrates-International-Women-s-Day-With-the-Debut-of-BRAVE-GIRL-RISING-a-Film-Raising-Awareness-and-Support-for-Refugee-Girls-Available-Now-on-Youtube?tracking_source=rss
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CLASSICAL / 2017-2018
SPHINX VIRTUOSI
PERFORMANCE / DEMONSTRATION
So, What’s Going On?
What happens when 18 powerful string musicians come together as one? Well…you get a powerhouse chamber orchestra thanks to Sphinx Virtuosi.
At the annual Sphinx Competition, Black and Latino middle school, high school, and college-aged string musicians compete among the best young soloist musicians in the country. The chosen soloists will perform in this small orchestra which typically consists of less than 25 players. Often chamber orchestras perform Baroque (pronounced buh-ROHK) and early Classical-era music—the smaller number of instruments is often more authentic for these styles than a full orchestra—or modern music written for a smaller orchestra. And Sphinx Virtuosi does it all!
One of the most unique things about Sphinx Virtuosi is that they play without a conductor. Working together, the group uses eye contact, a deep understanding of the music, and being “in tune” with one another to combine their sounds into a master work. Oh, and practice (and practice, and more practice!) plays an important role, too.
During the performance, the group will play masterpieces (famous classical pieces you may recognize by composers like Bach, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, and Mozart). It will also branch out to represent masterworks from other languages and styles, including modern-day compositions.
Sphinx also offers an overview of the concerto grosso. Historically, the concerto grosso is a type of Baroque musical composition. The Baroque era was a time period of artistic and musical development from 1600–1750 that included complex forms, bold ornamentation and embellishments (in terms of modern pop music, think Mariah Carey trills), and an overall dramatic feel. Johann Sebastian Bach is probably the most well-known composer of this period. In the concerto grosso, the melody and musical themes are passed between solo instruments and the full orchestra or chamber group. The Sphinx performance looks at the concerto grosso from the Baroque to modern times, performing a composition in that form composed just for this group.
Learn more about The Sphinx Story:
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Learn more about the concerto grosso:
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Who’s Who
Sphinx Virtuosi is made up of 18 Black and Latino string musicians. After winning the Sphinx Competition, they train with the Sphinx Organization to prepare for professional careers as solo musicians. The musicians also come together each fall to perform for the public. They consider themselves cultural ambassadors, bringing music across the country, and performing at Carnegie Hall every year.
Watch Sphinx Virtuosi participate in a “Random Act of Culture” at the Detroit Renaissance Center:
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The group was founded in 1996 to build diversity in classical music, and provide opportunities for music education and instruction to underserved communities. You might think of them as a bridge, connecting minority communities and the classical music establishment. The organization raises money to provide instruments to schools across the country. And since the organization was founded, the number of Black and Latino musicians in professional orchestras has more than doubled.
This year, the Sphinx Organization is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a program titled Concerti per Venti (Concert for Twenty).
Search the hashtag #SphinxStories to read stories from artists, alumni, friends, and family connected to the Sphinx Organization.
PHOTO by Kevin Kennedy
Check This Out…
The performance and demonstration will feature a collection of music through the ages. As the chamber orchestra performs, listen for differences between historic and modern pieces. What is the same in the way the music sounds and is played? What is different?
Sphinx is made up of instruments from just one of the orchestra families—the string family. String instruments are made of wood and held together with glue. They come in many sizes, from small to huge, but all include four strings, a bridge that supports the strings, and a hollow “box” through which sound is amplified. Strings are played by dragging a bow across the strings (arco) or plucking (pizzicato)—the strings vibrate to produce a musical tone.
The violin is the smallest and highest pitched string instrument. It is held between the musician’s chin and left shoulder, with the bow held in the right hand. As the highest instrument in the family, it frequently plays solo parts and the melody of a piece.
The viola is a little bigger than the violin, with a deeper, mid-range sound—kind of like an alto singer in a choir. It is held in the same way as a violin and its music is written on an alto clef, denoting the range between a soprano (high) and bass (low). It often plays a supporting, harmonic role in orchestral music.
The cello is lower than the viola and has a deep, rich sound. It is held upright against its musician, who sits with it between his or her legs. The cello rests on an endpin, which can be adjusted to the height of the musician playing it.
The lowest string instrument is called the double bass, or bass for short. Held upright like the cello, the bass is played by a standing musician. Its sound is so low that its notation, or notes written on the staff, is actually written an octave higher than it sounds. Otherwise, an entire bass piece might be written below the bass staff. A full double bass is about 6 feet tall.
Want a quick listen to the whole string family? Do it here:
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Watch and listen how…
During the concert, listen for how each member of the string family sounds, and how it is played. Are there more of one type of instrument than another?
This 20th anniversary tour had a special piece of music commissioned—a fancy word for custom-made—for it. Award-winning Latino composer Jimmy Lopez wrote Guardian of the Horizon: Concerto Grosso for Violin, Cello, and Strings. Guardian of the Horizon is a metaphor for the strength, wisdom, and resilience of Sphinx. Jimmy wrote about his inspiration in the program notes:
“I began to think of Greek Mythology and Oedipus (hence the title of the first movement) but then I started to think of it the way ancient Egyptians did, as a manifestation of Hathor, Goddess of birth and death, or as “Horus in the Horizon,” guarding the rising and setting sun, and finally, as holding the keys to the gates of wisdom. In my work, the Sphinx guards the passage to the afterlife, but the aspiring soul must first answer a Riddle, and only then can it be allowed into Crossing the Threshold.”
Guardian of the Horizon pays homage to the concerto grosso. Listen for the violin and the cello solos—at times they dramatically come together, and at others, they act as “rivals.” What is happening in the music when this occurs? Do you feel like you can “hear” the story?
PHOTO by Nan Melville
Think About This…
Sphinx Virtuosi believes in changing lives though the power of diversity in the arts. The group also hopes to engage young and new audiences with lots of different types of music. What new sounds do you hear from Sphinx? How are you inspired by the music?
One of the ways Sphinx hopes to advance diversity is by performing seldom presented compositions by composers of color, like Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, George Walker, Michael Abels, Astor Piazzolla, and Jimmy Lopez. Why do you think it’s important to hear modern works by composers of color along with traditional classical masterpieces? What stories do you think these modern masterpieces might tell?
The Sphinx of Giza, the inspiration behind the name of Sphinx Virtuosi, is an ancient Greek mythical creature with the head of a human and the body of a lion, sometimes with bird-like wings. In the Egyptian tradition, the sphinx is a living creature with a ferocious strength. In both traditions, the sphinx is a guardian to the entrance to the temple.
Learn more about the Sphinx of Giza. How do you think the Sphinx represents what you know about Sphinx Virtuosi?
Take Action: The Power of Diversity
Sphinx Virtuosi’s mission is transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts. Sphinx focuses on diversity in race, culture, and musical representation. What does the power of diversity mean to you? It might be similar to Sphinx’s expression or totally different.
Snap a picture or take a video showing how you represent or encourage the power of diversity and post it to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, or any other platform. Then, tag five friends and ask them to share what it means to them. Use #powerofdiversity as your hashtag.
Explore More
Go even deeper with the Sphinx Virtuosi Extras.
Bonus!
Now for something really cool, check out this string section rendition of Bruno Mars’s “Uptown Funk” by Eclectic Colour Orchestra:
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PHOTO (top) by Nan Melville.
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The Fortas Chamber Music Concerts are supported by generous contributors to the Abe Fortas Memorial Fund, and by a major gift to the fund from the late Carolyn E. Agger, widow of Abe Fortas.
Support for JFKC: A Centennial Celebration of John F. Kennedy is provided by Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, Chevron, the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, and Target.
© 2017 The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
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SFJAZZ all-star anniversary will reverberate far beyond San Francisco - San Diego Union Tribune
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/sd-et-music-sfjazz-anniversray-20161230-story.html
SFJAZZ all-star anniversary will reverberate far beyond San Francisco
by George Varga
Downtown San Francisco’s trendy Hayes Valley district is home to such major cultural attractions as the historic War Memorial Opera House, Davies Symphony Hall, the Asian Arts Museum and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. But it is the five-year-old SFJAZZ — which occupies an adjacent square block — that has inspired Megan Caper to travel to the Bay Area several times a year since she moved to San Diego in 2012.
“There’s nowhere else you can go that’s like it,” said Caper, 44, an Ocean Beach resident who is an occupational therapist for the San Diego Unified School District.
“San Francisco has such a great history for music and literature, and having a dedicated space for jazz is unique. San Francisco has terrific museums, but you can go to a museum almost anywhere. You can go to SFJAZZ, pretty much any night and hear incredible jazz music — and lots of different kinds of jazz — and that’s unique.”
Daniel Atkinson, the La Jolla Athenaeum Music & Arts Library’s veteran Jazz Program Coordinator, is also happy to sing the praises of SFJAZZ. The $64 million, three-story complex houses a 700-seat concert hall, a 90-seat club, three rehearsal rooms, a digital lab, administrative offices, a restaurant, two bars, and more.
“It’s amazing,” said Atkinson, who serves alongside SFJAZZ Founder and Executive Artistic Director Randall Kline on the board of the nonprofit Western Jazz Presenters Network.
“SFJAZZ has a very different feel than Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. In scale and scope, I’m not aware of anything that’s in the league of these two places, with year-round facilities dedicated to jazz and having educational components. That’s a pretty rare beast. SFJAZZ is a really fascinating and well-conceived facility with exceptional programs.”
Star-studded January concerts
SFJAZZ kicked off its fifth season last September. From Jan. 18 to Jan. 29, it will host a two-week-long Season Five Celebration.
The lineup includes such luminaries as guitarist Bill Frisell, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, singer Mary Stallings, tabla drum master Zakir Hussain, the Kronos Quartet, Snarky Puppy, David Crosby, drummer Cindy Blackman, the talent-rich SFJAZZ Collective Santana, and saxophonists John Handy, Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman and Miguel Zenón. Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart will be on hand Jan. 18 to present the SFJAZZ Lifetime Achievement Award to Hussain, his periodic partner in percussive adventures.
This all-star roster will perform in a spacious, state-of-the-art venue designed to maximize the live concert experience for artists and attendees alike.
The stage and sight lines provide virtually every concertgoer with a clear, unobstructed view. The exemplary audio system has been finely tuned to capture both the power and nuances of jazz, whether acoustic or amplified.
“SFJAZZ is one of those places where they really got everything right,” said San Diego-bred bass guitar star Nathan East, who performed at SFJAZZ last June with his Grammy-nominated band, Fourplay.
“On stage, you feel like you’re in the middle and making eye contact with everyone in the audience. It’s like SFJAZZ had a blank check book to create this remarkable place — in the middle of the city — without any constraints. They’ve definitely created a template for others to follow.”
SFJAZZ could have been born in San Diego
Had it not been for a simple twist of fate, SFJAZZ mastermind Kline came very close to settling in San Diego — not San Francisco — back in his days as a college student.
In 1973, the Boston-area native moved to La Jolla, where his brother still resides. Kline’s goal was to enroll at UC San Diego and study with renowned contrabassist Bert Turetzky, whose students in that decade included Mark Dresser and Nathan East.
“My brother, who had been stationed there in the Navy, agreed to put me up for a little while,” Kline recalled, speaking from his SFJAZZ office. “I loved the beaches and everything else. And La Jolla had some good jazz clubs, where people like (San Diego bass great) Bob Magnusson played.”
Alas for San Diego, Kline was so captivated by San Francisco during a weekend Bay Area visit that he moved up there a few weeks later without even having enrolled at UCSD.
“I remember crossing the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, at sunset, and it looked like Oz,” he said. “I ended up enrolling at San Francisco State. I was looking for a way to make money, and thought producing concerts was a good way to do that.”
Kline laughed.
“I learned quickly that it wasn’t a good way! I did six jazz concerts at a cowboy bar in San Jose called the Gold Rush. The first was by Kenny Burrell, followed by Dexter Gordon, Jack DeJohnette, Flora Purim and Airto, Joanne Brackeen and Richie Cole. Three of the concerts did well, three not so well. I had to quit school to make money to pay back what I lost.”
Undaunted, Kline soon began working at the Boarding House. The top San Francisco venue hosted concerts by Bob Marley, Herbie Hancock, former San Diegan Tom Waits, Al Jarreau and Steve Martin, who recorded his first three albums there.
Armed with a budget of $28,000, Kline and Clint Gilbert launched the Jazz in the City festival in 1983. They renamed it the San Francisco Jazz Festival in 1990. By 1993, the festival had a $1 million annual operating budget and drew more than 30,000 people to 19 concerts. Kline has rarely looked back since.
Exponential growth
As the festival built an enviable national reputation for the quality and diversity of its programming, Kline began to think on a grander scale. He envisioned a year-round jazz center that would appeal equally to veteran fans and young new listeners — a place that would be an intrinsic part of the community, not a gilded palace like many upscale arts institutions.
After years of extensive fundraising and careful planning, SFJAZZ moved into its inviting new home on Jan. 21, 2013.
It was a landmark achievement for Kline and SFJAZZ, which is the largest non-profit jazz organization in the Western United States. Covering 35,000 square feet, SFJAZZ presents more than 400 concerts a year. Annual attendance exceeds 150,000.
“The numbers are crazy — we have over 90 percent attendance,” Kline proudly noted.
”Our business plan was built on the premise that we’d do a certain number of nights per week, and then we’d get real revenue by making it available for (outside promoters) to come in and rent. Now, we have to fight with our own rental department to get all the dates that we want to book.”
Kline credits the success of SFJAZZ to a “secret sauce,” although he is happy to share many of the ingredients.
“We set out to do a couple of audacious things and approached some of them naively, but smartly naively,” he recalled.
“Could there be an institution for jazz, and could you establish it? Could we redefine what a cultural institution is for the 21st century? Because a lot of the other institutions are challenged. Symphonies and theater and ballet companies are all struggling.
“Institutions have an image of being stodgy, which they don’t have to be. So, how could we do something dynamic? The answer is a lot of little things — and striving to be a vibrant community center. But, truthfully, we really didn’t know if this would work.”
For more on SFJAZZ, go tosandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/
SFJAZZ Season Five Celebration
With: Joshua Redman, Joe Lovano, Cindy Blackman Santana, Stefon Harris, Snarky Puppy, the Kronos Quartet, Stefon Harris, Miguel Zenón and others.
When: Jan. 18-21
Where: SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin St., San Francisco
Tickets: Prices vary for each concert
Phone: (415) 283-0342
Online: sfjazz.org/celebrate5
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