Music I Like – Contemporary Classical

I have listened to a lot of classical music in the last couple decades, but mostly as accompaniment to another art form like ballet or opera. Ólafur Arnalds was my introduction to the music sometimes known as neoclassical. Since that discovery, I’ve found a lot of contemporary classical music that I like.

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Ólafur Arnalds

The man who started it all. Ólafur was my introduction to contemporary classical music. My entry point was the indie-like, accessible For Now I Am Winter with vocals from Agent Fresco’s Arnór Dan. From there I went on to listen to his more classically styled compositions – and to explore other artists in the genre. After a hand injury, Ólafur focused on his electronic project Kiasmos for several years. But 2018’s re:member returns to form.

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Nils Frahm

I’ve already written about how I went to the electronic music festival Decibel Fest to see Ólafur Arnalds on a split bill with some guy named Nils Frahm, and how Frahm blew my mind and changed my ideas about what music could be. His latest album, All Melody, is a bit more traditional, as the title indicates. But Spaces is still one of my all time favorite albums.

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Valgeir Sigurðsson

Valgeir is better known as producer, but I loved his album Architecture of Loss. Even now, most of his work is still behind the scenes and in collaboration with other Bedroom Community artists. But most recently, he has released another solo album, Little Moscow, that is every bit as meditative and even more melodic.

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Caroline Shaw

A newer discovery (and recent release) is the album Orange by Caroline Shaw and the Attacca Quartet. It doesn’t do anything weird or experimental. It’s just a beautiful, engaging work for strings exploring the “the ways we find wonder in endless encounters with the same object” – like an orange, or a suite for four strings.

{Aside: If you haven’t read the excellent manga Orange by Ichigo Takano, I highly recommend it. Even though it presents the problematic idea that friends can rescue someone from mental illness without professional medical help, it is a truly beautiful story about the impact on loved ones left behind. I read it in one sitting and ugly cried through the last third.}

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Liam Byrne

Many of Bedroom Community’s releases are over my head, but I try to keep track of what they’re up to because when they hit the spot it is sweet. Liam Byrne‘s Concrete is just what I’ve been waiting to hear from them. The album combines contemporary and centuries-old compositions, but the aesthetic is so consistent I dare you to guess which are which. It’s all beautiful.

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John Luther Adams

At least where I live, in Seattle, John Luther Adams made classical music cool again when the second of his three environmentalist compositions created for the Seattle Symphony under now-departing conductor Ludovic Morlot won a Pulitzer in 2014. He may technically be from New York, but John Luther Adams is kind of a Seattle hero. The final installation in the series, Become Desert, is as spacious and lovely as the others.