One of the neat things about living where I live is that I'm about a block or so from the Kennedy Center. Every night, 365 days a year, the Center hosts the free Millenium concerts. Last night brought us Michael Zapruder who was behind the 52 songs idea and now buys rare records for the Pandora project. Several other music bloggers have picked up on him and Pitchfork gave him a 3.5 stars for one of the tracks on his most recent release.
His songs are of the singer-songwriter variety, soulful, heartfelt - very reminiscient of the Elvis Costello - Burt Bacharach collaboration of several years back or Bruce Cockburn unplugged. In fact, Zapruder's voice sounds very much like Elvis Costello. I know, normally, yeccch but I was in a mood for it (facing up to the holidays without Mom).
Some nice non-traditional chord and fret work on the acoustic guitar and two songs at the Kennedy Center's baby grand. Eachnotesecure calls his work "delicate songwriting." Actually, I'm thinking that there is a little bit of insanity in Zapruder's songs though you could hardly tell - he does wipe away a tear every once in awhile. The highlight of the set were his two songs on piano, "Wounded Bird" (Mp3 link) and "Blackhawk" (which appeared on this 2004 book-CD compilation).
You can see the video (small picture but good resolution and sound) of the performance here (the piano songs are about 16 minutes into it) and there are more MP3s available on Zapruder's website.
1 comment:
Hmmm...it's November 22 and the top post is about a guy named Zapruder at the Kennedy Center. Let me guess: his agent's name is Lincoln.
Post a Comment