Original image by There Stands the Glass.
My desire to continue exploring new sounds seems to intensify every day. I want to hear it all. I occasionally fear my compulsion for music discovery will eventually hit a dead end. What if I exhaust every possibility?
As the old saw has it, I don’t know what I don’t know. An initial encounter with Ferruccio Busoni a couple days ago indicates I’ll die long before there’s nothing left for me to uncover.
Lowell Liebermann’s rendering of Busoni’s “Fantasia contrappuntistica”on his new album Personal Demons transfixed me. I soon learned Busoni was a celebrated pianist as well as an inventive composer. There’s something spellbinding about the compromised sonic quality of Busoni’s 1922 recordings. A vast trove of recorded Busoni works awaits me.
Perhaps I should be grateful rather than ashamed for having learned most everything I know about music aside from outlaw country through independent study. As an increasingly committed autodidact, I recognize my education is just beginning.
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I rank all but one of Pat Metheny’s 46 albums at Plastic Sax.