Imogen Heap

Imogen Heap is my current favorite modern musician. I consider her the most interesting composer I have come across in a really long time and one of the most technologically adept female composers since Laurie Anderson.

Imogen Heap spent a year secluded in her apartment composing her album Speak For Yourself which brought her a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 2007 (an award she should have won, in my opinion). The songs on this album are rich with layers of sound that she is amazingly able to recreate in concert using synthesizers and other devices. Her voice has an incredible range of nearly three octaves.

Her song Hide And Seek (#66), which appeared on a compilation album of songs of Grammy nominees, was my first experience of her music and an immediate favorite. Here she performs this song live:



I like nearly every song on the Speak For Yourself album, but one that I like the best is one called Have You Got It In You (#67). Unfortunately, there does not yet exist in YouTube a live version of this song that isn't mangled in some way, so here is a rather boring to look at, but at least beautiful to listen to version from her album:

Michael Hedges

Acoustic guitar is probably my favorite instrument in all the world, and Michael Hedges is one artist who explored the possibilities of this instrument like no one before him. Sadly, he died in a car accident in 1997 at the young age of 43. Fortunately for the world, much of his music is preserved in many wonderful albums, but who knows what might have been had he lived on.

To give you an idea of just how innovative he was, here he is performing the song "Because It's There" (#48 in my list):



Here is Part 4 of a seminar he gave in Pittsburg in 1991, where you can see some of his unusual playing techniques, and hear him talk about Bartok and the Fibonacci sequence:



Michael Hedges Biography

Michael Hedges website with links to Discography, Tunings, Transcriptions, and more.

Oh, my God...#64

Linda Waterfall singing "Way of Beauty".

favorite songs...

Here is a list of some modern songs that, when I heard each for the first time, my reaction was "Oh, my God! What was that song???" and I immediately wanted to hear each one again and again. As much as I prefer silence, I would still gladly listen to every one of these songs again and again. Today I added the song "La Guardia" by Tito Puente, from the album "Carnival". The numbers are just a way of keeping track of how many there are and have nothing to do with any kind of a "most to least favorite" categorization. I pretty much like all of them equally.

1. My Favorite Things - John Coltrane
2. Aspirations - Gentle Giant
3. Icarus - Paul Winter Consort
4. Bird Song - Linda Waterfall
5. Solisbury Hill - Peter Gabriel
6. Worry About You - Ivy
7. Love At The Five And Dime - Nanci Griffith
8. My Father - Judy Collins
9. Catch The Wind - Donovan
10. Excellent Birds - Laurie Anderson
11. The Flat Earth - Thomas Dolby
12. Crazy - Seal
13. Friday I'm In Love - The Cure
14. Everybody Wants To Rule The World - Tears For Fears
15. One Of These Things First - Nick Drake
16. Railway - Dando Shaft
17. Mama - Spice Girls
18. Message in a Bottle - The Police
19. Brothers In Arms - Dire Straits
20. Anybody Seen My Baby - Rolling Stones
21. Bo Radley - Bruce Hornsby
22. love is more thicker than forget - Jonatha Brooke
23. We Can Work It Out - The Beatles
24. Classical Gas - Mason Williams
25. 10,000 Miles - Mary Chapin Carpenter
26. Rain - Patty Griffin
27. Tango - Patty Larkin
28. Sweet Bird - Joni Mitchell
29. Mr. Tambourine Man - Bob Dylan
30. Honey And The Moon - Joseph Arthur
31. Know By Now - Robert Palmer
32. Lucky Man - Emerson, Lake and Palmer
33. And You And I - Yes
34. Black Coffee - All Saints
35. For Emily Wherever I May Find Her - Simon & Garfunkel
36. Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First) - John Cougar Mellencamp
37. A'soalin' - Peter, Paul & Mary
38. Goin' Up To Country - Canned Heat
39. Whiter Shade Of Pale - Procul Harum
40. Morning Has Broken (Traditional) - Cat Stevens
41. Passion - Raya O'Coal
42. Bloszfueszig - Broadlahn
43. Shotgun Down The Avalanche - Shawn Colvin
44. Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Judy Garland
45. Small Blue Thing - Suzanne Vega
46. Thank U - Alanis Morissette
47. Lady Of The Island - Crosby, Stills and Nash
48. Because It's There - Michael Hedges
49. Stolen Land - Bruce Cockburn
50. All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan) - Jimi Hendrix
51. Sorento Moon - Tena Arena
52. Could I Be Your Girl - Jann Arden
53. Sand And Water - Beth Nielsen Chapman
54. Hammond Song - The Roches
55. Raincloud - Lighthouse Family
56. In The Arms Of An Angel - Sarah McLaughlin
57. Learning To Fly - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
58. One Of Us - Joan Osborne
59. Keep Your Distance (Richard Thompson) - Buddy and Julie Miller
60. Change The World (Sims, Kenney, Kirkpatrick) - Eric Clapton
61. Highwayman - Jimmy Webb
62. Bramble and the Rose (Barbara Keith) - Kate Brislin and Jody Stecher
63. La Guardia - Tito Puente
64. Way Of Beauty - Linda Waterfall
65. Aerial Boundaries - Michael Hedges
66. Hide And Seek - Imogen Heap
67. Have You Got It In You - Imogen Heap
68. First Circle (Live in Japan) - Pat Metheny

I have a different list for classical music that I might post someday.