Best New Music Fall 2024
Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, Brad Mehldau, and Westside Gunn cooked up some heat last season.
Stuff Other Than Albums
This is perhaps the greatest Tiny Desk Concert of all time, seriously. I’ve watched it so many times. It’s the jazzified version of Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso’s already very good trap, electro-latin hiphop stuff. Also check out the recently released live recording of their album BAÑO MARÍA.
The Marías make beautiful, vibey, R&B-ish pop music, and these two extended versions of one of their best songs are great fun.
Very good, as per usual. Jacob Collier is clearly a musical genius, though I sometimes find his music not too exciting. But I really, really like “Silent Night” from this.
Awesome! Rita Payés is one of my favourite contemporary vocalists. She clearly has an immense musical knowledge and is able to blend genres effortlessly to produce beautiful jazzy stuff. Be sure to check out her 2022 hit “Algo Contigo.” Also, she released a cool single with Raquel Lúa in October.
As you know if you’ve read my past post on music, I’m obsessed with Nancy Ajram. She’s my favourite pop star. This kinda interesting, old-timey sounding single appeared on her Spotify but wasn’t mentioned in any press or on her social media, so IDK what it is. But it’s cool.1
“PHOENIX” goes ridonculously hard. It’s the theme song for a new film based on the manga Acma: Game. If you like it, check out “Touch off.”
I’ve kept my eye on Laura Itandehui ever since I listened to her wonderful and creative eponymous album (from which my favourite song is definitely “Trataré”). She put out three singles last season, of which I prefer “Mejor Ya No Regreses” (the other two are “La Distancia” and “El Año Que Viene”). It gives Tejano and jazz and is super fun and creative.
Albums
This is a no-skipper; it makes you want to dance. Manolito y Su Trabuco are the best timba band out there. They’ve found the perfect balance between classic salsa vibes and jazziness (i.e., fantastic improvisation, rhythmic sophistication, slightly more harmonic variety than like Fania All-Stars, etc.).
Avishai Cohen (the bassist, not the trumpeter) put out a cool trio album. Be sure to check out “Liebestraum Nr 3” and “The Ever And Ever Evolving Etude,” which is an interesting sequel to his Ever Evolving Etude.
In keeping with the orange jazz album cover theme, here’s Brad Mehldau’s latest. It’s very, very good. Mehldau is in jazz pianist GOAT contention.
Beautiful!2 It took me a while to be able to fully appreciate Shostakovich. I mean this both in the sense that he’s an acquired taste and that his works take a long time to listen to. But they should be listened to in full nonetheless.
I’m so grateful to have been introduced to Westside Gunn. This guy is awesome, and this album is straight fire.
Very cool jazzy prog-rock. “Johnny” and “Me Acuerdo de Tí” are particularly beautiful.
Engrossing and beautiful. Six Bach songs, four of which Ólafsson arranged himself. The other two were arranged by pianists György Kurtág and Harold Bauer. (Kurtág is extremely cool.)
K Dot is dominating rap right now, as he should be.
These are sweet. Rued Langgaard is underrated (everyone should go listen to his first symphony in B minor right now!). Also, Langgaard’s most famous work, Music of the Spheres, which I think has an appropriately ominous and funny title, was first recorded by Thomas Dausgaard, who was once the director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, where I saw my first live symphony, which is cool.
Ray Chen, one of the world’s greatest living violinists,3 just released a new recording of the Korngold violin concerto, one of my favourite pieces of classical music. Exciting! It’s as fantastic as you’d predict. Also on the album are bunch of interesting pieces with themes from anime, film, and video games.
Lastly:
OK, this is not new music. But Fairuz turned 90 this fall! In honour of her and of Lebanon, check out “Le Beirut,” which was released at the height of the Lebanese Civil War. (It’s based on the famous tune of the adagio from Concierto de Aranjuez, which Miles Davis used for Sketches of Spain.)
Apparently, Ajram is going to star in a movie with Arab music legend Amr Diab.* I guess I’ll watch it out of curiosity.
*Go check out his awesome song “Nour El Ein.”
But the guy butchered the trombone solo in the second movement. The pitch and timbre were all over the place. When the orchestra comes in to repeat and build on the theme from the trombone solo, it’s extremely good.
Who I once saw perform Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto live in Seattle. During the performance, at a fairly pivotal and virtuosic moment, one of his strings broke and he had to switch violins with another violinist mid-concerto.