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Suggestion request - My 75 year old mentor has gone blind
A mentor and friend of mine has lost his eyesight. I would like to share some music and musicians with him that he might enjoy listening to and help him fight boredom/ find comfort.
I know he likes jazz. I know he likes classical, but he is familiar with all of the obvious suggestions. He formed his musical taste before metal or rap/hiphop were popular. Melodic songs would be welcome.
I'm hoping that some people here can share tracks/records/musicians that he might not have found while he was busy with his career and not actively exploring music.
This is hardly exhaustive, and quite vague, because I'm just going off of the broad fact that he likes jazz, but I figured I could at least share a list of somewhat more modern jazz acts, i.e. perhaps musical acts that a 75-year-old might have missed if he stopped regularly seeking out new artists in his 20s-30s. Some of these cats were putting stuff out in the 1980s and 1990s, though, so he's likely heard of some of them, but hopefully this might help him find a few new discoveries in here.
You'll get plenty of musical results back just plugging any of these names into Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, etc...
Caveat for other commenters: I'm specifically aiming for musical acts that aren't quite modern, but are not so old/"classic" in the jazz sense that it'd be a no-brainer for a 75-year-old jazz fan to know of them. Hence why you'll see a name like Chris Potter but not John Coltrane (both world-famous saxophonists, but one is a lot more of a "household name," and I'm assuming @boxer_dogs_dance's mentor would have heard of them). Jazz is, very thankfully, somewhat healthy and alive today, though the jazz of today feels a heck of a lot different than what one might think of as "jazz," so I'm trying to bridge the gap here and find things are modern and still accessible, but not so old-school that they'd sound trite to your mentor. I hope this helps!
Individual musicians
(lots of these names will appear with others in collaborative albums, but searching for one name will bring up lots of albums of which they were a part)
Brad Mehldau
Keith Jarrett
Joshua Redman
Chris Potter
Kenny Garrett
Dave Douglas
Kenny Wheeler
John Scofield
Pat Metheny (he's probably heard of Metheny at the very least but I'd be remiss not to mention him)
Kurt Rosenwinkel
Avishai Cohen (there are two of them - bass and trumpet players, both stellar)
Ensembles
Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band
Maria Schneider Orchestra
Steps Ahead
More modern stuff
Caveat that he may not like any of this because it's a far cry from a lot of traditional-sounding jazz, but I would be remiss not to mention it because every step of jazz's evolution has been spectacular to witness IMO!
Tigran Hamasyan
Esperanza Spalding
GoGo Penguin
Donny McCaslin
Yussef Dayes
BADBADNOTGOOD
Nate Smith
fox capture plan
The Bad Plus
Waldo's Gift
T.R.A.M.
Jacob Collier
Snarky Puppy
... Not jazz
The crop of musicians that have orbited around Vulfpeck and its affiliates are an absolute joy in the world of modern music (i.e. still actively putting records out today and showing no signs of stopping). I wouldn't call any of it jazz, but many of the musicians grew up in the study of jazz, or at the very least went to school for music before their paths diverged. I'll share a smattering of musicians in this vein, again with the caveat that these are all a lot closer to funk/pop, but I would hope that anyone who appreciates jazz might appreciate what these acts are putting out.
Vulfpeck
Cory Wong
The Fearless Flyers
Mark Lettieri
Vulfmon
Theo Katzman
Louis Cole (Louis is very weird - if he really likes this direction, you can try this one, but maybe shy away if this is getting too modern for him)
This is truly just scratching the surface -- if you happen to share any of this with him and he likes any of it, please let me know and I'll try to recommend more in that vein. I'm sorry that he has lost his eyesight, and I hope that some of this might bring him some comfort!
Thank you!
If your friend is comfortable with exploring beyond what they're familiar with, check out Too Many Zooz. They play a unique genre they call 'brasshouse', which has elements of jazz. Though, it's a very modern sound that's far from classical.
Some of my favorite songs of theirs:
Tricerahops
Havana Banana
Car Alarm - this is IMO absolutely brilliant, but unfortunately you have to watch the music video to fully appreciate it.
Best wishes to your mentor.
Gotta call out 2SAXY whenever Leo P. / Too Many Zooz are mentioned. Their long form “walking” improv sessions around cities are always a joy to watch and listen to!
If he likes classical music, he may like Punch Brothers? They're a bluegrass band, but they're all classical music nerds, and they tend to incorporate aspects of classical arrangements into their writing. Phosphorescent Blues, in particular, has several songs (Familiarity being probably the most prominent) that feel like classical/bluegrass fusion.
The band leader for the Punch Brothers, Chris Thile, also has a few collections of Bach sonatas that he's recorded on mandolin. He's probably the most talented mandolin player alive, and they're pretty fantastic to listen to.
Thile also has some collaborations with some of the folks that @Shevanel mentioned! He has a duo album with Brad Meldau that has my favorite rendition of Tabhair dom do Lámh. And he's featured on a few Fearless Flyers tracks, too!
Love Chris Thile, I didn’t realize he led the Punch Brothers! I’m excited for his upcoming classical release as well; will definitely check this out knowing that he’s involved.
Oh, I'm excited for you! I think you'll like Punch Brothers quite a lot. His other band is Nickel Creek, which has been around since they were teenagers — their latest album, Celebrants, is really interesting and I love it. Dotted Line is also very good, but is a more straightforward bluegress album (which, to be clear, I also love haha)
Thankyou. This looks like fun and I'm going to check it out for myself as well as sharing with my mentor.
If he likes classical but needs less well-known suggestions, he should explore the world of wind band/ensemble repertoire! It's an incredibly rich tradition but simply not as mainstream as orchestral or piano literature. This is what I studied in college/grad school so I'd love to recommend some things!
In no particular order:
Two that are a little more out there:
Ugh. I could go on for ages, there's so much good music in the wind band/ensemble world. If he likes these, let me know and I will happily list a ton more! If he's interested in learning more about the history of the wind band, I'd recommend "The New Winds of Change" by Frank L. Battisti (not sure if there's an audio book or not...). Or, for something much shorter and more digestible, I can share a Spotify playlist and handout I made for a session I taught on the subject a few months ago. I can give you the raw (not PDF) file for the handout so he can feed it to a screen reader.
Hope this is helpful and I hope he enjoys it! This is really great what you're doing for him. Let me know if you'd like any of the resources I'd mentioned or need help finding anything!
I’m certainly interested in hearing more myself, including your presentation and notes if you’re willing to share!
My specialization in college was jazz education, but I played in my university’s wind ensemble all through college and always enjoyed it even though I never dug into the literature as much. Our director was huge on Grainger but I always wished we did more Giroux and Mackey especially.
Thank you!
FYI, he has text to speech setup for pdfs, but I need to double check whether he has spotify. I didn't want to ask clarifying questions until I had some initial suggestions to share with him.