2024 began in the afterglow of the release of my first longform piece, Tears For a Numinous Realm, on New Year’s Eve ’23.
The elephant in the Projects Room, so to speak, remains the Carving in Shadows album, which passed the 12th anniversary of its inception. It did move forward this year, so I’m optimistic about completing it in ’25. That’s always too easy to say, of course, so we’ll see. This year’s priorities were reflected in its album releases.
2024 Releases
The meditation chant album Personal Bhajan, originally released in 2020, needed a remix, so I withdrew it a year or two ago. When I finally sat down to remix it, I was unsure whether a rerelease was even merited, having clearly forgotten how this strongly hypnotic drone chant gets under my skin. Within ten minutes of beginning playback, all the bogus doubts had fled. The remix was done in short order and the album rereleased on auspicious Feb. 29.
My wife Daci had long advocated for a repackaging of the Divinations album as a baby sleep aid. A great idea, but I always had cold feet. On listening to the album through, I finally figured out the reason: most of the album isn’t quite chill enough to do the job. There are too many flashes of intensity that would defeat the purpose and probably frighten baby. But the first piece, Exquisite Divination of Patterns, was perfectly suited. So I reworked it into an hour-long dreamscape, and released the album Baby Go to Sleep in late March.
My next project would firmly establish me as a poster child for Brand Confusion.
I began voice lessons in early 2021 with two ambitions as a singer: wordless voice parts important to the narrative and atmosphere of Carving in Shadows, and … wait for it … Christmas carols.
The roadmap for the carols album was clear from the beginning: I wanted all carols (no Santa, no reindeer, no tree, no packages); I didn’t want any of the chestnuts that have been recorded a million times; I wanted minimal accompaniment, to keep the focus on the story and the intimacy of the personal relationship. In other words, a total throwback to the 19th century…
(In fact, the original conception was entirely a cappella but, fortunately, I heeded Daci’s sage – not sage-and-onions – advice against it.)
Remembrance of Christmas Past (released on Dec. 4) is my recording debut as a singer and contains 21 carols, some of them arranged in medleys. All but one originated in Europe or the British Isles. Many are published in two important compilations, the Oxford Book of Carols and the International Book of Christmas Carols. Most are from the 19th century, and several are much older. Most were introduced to me in instrumental versions by some wonderful artists, several of them on the Gourd label.
So, big thanks to: Loreena McKennitt, Mary McLaughlin, Robin Petrie, Barry Phillips, Kim Robertson, Sequentia, The Tallis Scholars, Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel, and Joe Weed, for years of righteous joy and inspiration. Thanks also to Romolo Tavani for the glorious artwork.
The funny thing is, this album is sort of connected with the eyes cast down soundworld, with its minimal and fairly atmospheric approach. It also yielded my first performances since 2017. But anyway…
Other Work in Progress
A new album is coming soon, which will include my performance at The Gatherings in Philadelphia, Oct. 7, 2017, along with a new piece.
The print score for my guitar quartet After the Sun score moved forward a little, kicking and screaming at every step.
Other People’s Music
The Musical Discovery of the Year (or the past several years) is Blackmore’s Night: Ex-Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s musical passion was always the Renaissance, which birthed this project in 1997. I knew about it early on but, unfortunately, never took it seriously enough to check it out. That’s called Lost Time, folks. This band is just a joy. I have every studio album and listen to them obsessively…
Books! We Got Books!
My reading this year cut some large swaths through the work of several major writers. Everything from Kazuo Ishiguro, who’s simply beyond brilliant. Most of Sam Shepard, who was severely marked by his early life, but bravely soldiered on looking for deep meaning. The early (pre-Demian) Hermann Hesse, whose search for essential, personal truth was his drive from the beginning. Memoirs from rock heroes Dave Grohl, Phil Collins and Geddy Lee. Naturally, at Christmas, the seasonally omnipresent Mr Dickens…
We Disengage, We Turn the Page
I set up the tribute website LucetteBourdin.com in early 2020 in an effort to spread the word about Lucette’s splendid music and to engage the community of her listeners.
That didn’t work out, so this year I let go of the domain. The site is archived here. More importantly, Lucette’s music is all at Bandcamp.
All the best for 2025!