catching up - desert island discs

Some time ago (ok, an absurdly long time ago) I started to list the albums I would want with me on a desert island. I took an unplanned hiatus from blogging and never finished, so I'm going to bang out the whole list in one post. Here goes...

• "All That You Can't Leave Behind" by U2 This is my favorite offering from what is obviously one of the best loved bands of the last thirty years. It's got a wide range of good stuff, from the iconic rock anthem (Beautiful Day) to the reflective and deeply spiritual (Grace). It's telling that at some point I've used almost every track on this album as a listening activity with my ESL students. They never fail to provoke interesting discussion. Of course, as I mentioned about "Live Wide Open," this list is deeply personal and I have personal reasons for choosing this one. The summer I spent at Snow Mountain Ranch was the summer this album burst into my musical consciousness. It was the soundtrack of an incredibly challenging and enriching three months, often thanks to my friends Tom and Drew. I can't think of more perfect songs than Elevation after finishing a grueling hike , or Walk On before starting it.
  

• "When I Look In Your Eyes" by Diana Krall When I tell people about this album I usually point out that it was nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy in 1999, the first time in ages a jazz album had been considered. It ended up losing to Carlos Santana's "Supernatural," but to see Krall in the same category as The Dixie Chicks, TLC, and The Backstreet Boys was incredible (and she walked away with Best Jazz Vocal Performance). Last year's Herbie Hancock shocker was the only other time in recent history that jazz got such love from the Grammy Awards. The album's a fantastic throw back to the days of jazz divas like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. She mixes classic swing standards with lesser known gems. My favorite track is "Popsicle Toes." The combination of Krall's sensual delivery and the wonderful word play of songwriter Michael Franks makes it one of my favorite love songs. Again, though, what puts this over the top is the memory of seeing Krall perform at DeVos Hall in Grand Rapids from the third row. My sister got tickets for the two of us as a birthday present for me, and we had a blast.
  

• "Bach Cello Suites" by Mstislav Rostropovich This is actually two CDs, but there's no way I could choose one of them over the other. If I had to pick just one album of classical music, this is the one. It's ironic because I usually prefer Romantic composers. You'll find much more Beethoven, Brahms, and Mendelssohn than Bach in my collection. But when my former boss Cindy lent me these CDs I was hooked immediately. Rostropovich recorded them in an empty church, as opposed to a studio, and the result is an incredibly warm and resonant quality. The 6 suites express just about every emotion you can imagine, and every time I listen to them I feel something new and different. I marvel at the versatility of something so simple - an unaccompanied cello. In later years I got a copy of the sheet music and tried to play them on my Euphonium. I hadn't grasped the depth of Rostropovich's mastery before then.

I think I could survive with those as a bare minimum. I thought this would be a much longer list, but those are the cut above. I give honorable mentions to: "Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel, "OK Computer" by Radiohead, "Ella and Louis" by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Mendelssohn's "Symphonies 3 and 4", "Crash" by Dave Matthews Band, "Monk Alone" by Thelonius Monk, "In Between Dreams" by Jack Johnson, "The Score" by The Fugees, "Time Out" by Dave Brubeck, "The Messiah" by Handel, "Stunt" by Barenaked Ladies, "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis, "The German Requiem" by Brahms, "Graceland" by Paul Simon, and "Saxophone Colossus" by Sonnie Rollins.