Confessions

Submitted by nonesuch on
Release Date
DescriptionExcerpt

Confessions is a collaboration between acclaimed American composer Nico Muhly and Faroese singer/songwriter Teitur. The lyrics, inspired by or culled from video and commentary the pair found on YouTube, are simple, matter-of-fact, fragmentary, funny, and strange, yet they attain a dignity paired with the gorgeous and expressive music, composed and arranged for Holland Baroque, which performs it on the album. Gramophone calls it "brilliantly witty, strangely compelling ... subtly affecting."

Description

Nonesuch Records releases Confessions, a collaboration between the acclaimed American composer Nico Muhly and the Faroese singer/songwriter Teitur, on October 21, 2016, the vinyl edition on November 4. The two musicians began work on the project when Muhly was composer-in-residence at Muziekgebouw Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The songs' lyrics were inspired by or culled from video and commentary the pair found on YouTube. Confessions was recorded with Holland Baroque.

Hailing from the Faroe Islands, halfway between Norway and Iceland in the North Atlantic, Teitur Lassen (who uses only his first name professionally) has long been a successful pop artist in Europe, winning several Danish music awards, touring internationally, and collaborating with such artists as Seal, Corinne Bailey Rae, and French star Emilie Simon and Nolwenn Leroy. "We came up with this premise of boring videos, home videos," he explains. "It was a time when everyone was posting these meaningless videos. It was just fascinating when we started watching them … The more you watched them the more you started to wonder, 'What is behind this? Why are people doing this?' They are really saying, 'This is really beautiful, this is really sick, this is me,' people confessing things. And that gave us the title for the record."

"Teitur took a lot of these things," continues Muhly, "and looked at the comments and imagined the world that these people inhabited. We also solicited some anonymous Dutch videos, people telling us things that are unexpected, including this woman who said 'I love the smell of my printer in the morning.' It made me so happy. That smell is so specific. These are not confessions in a dirty way but more like if you went over to a friend's house 10 minutes before they expected you and you got a glimpse into something private. As a songwriter, Teitur focuses on a little detail or a little gesture, and then one can divine bigger content."

Holland Baroque's mission is "to convince a large and varied audience of the flexibility and vitality of (Baroque) music." As Muhly notes, "They perform standing up, and they are as old school as you'd like, but they chewed into this material really gleefully. It was a kind of magic project actually."

When he began his tenure at Eindhoven, Muhly says, "I knew I wanted to work with this Baroque ensemble. The distance between contemporary listening and Baroque music is one of the most heartbreaking and interesting things. Most of the music I like is from the 17th century or before. It's a tradition that never stopped—a small tradition, a specific one. There is something incredibly direct about Baroque music and Baroque instruments." He continues, "But it also posed a different challenge. Baroque musicians aren't accustomed to the sorts of rhythms attendant to contemporary music, and that brought another interesting tension to the project."

The original four songs from Eindhoven worked so well that Teitur and Muhly continued writing. By 2009, they had a concert-length piece comprising the 14 songs on Confessions. Muhly, Teitur, and Holland Baroque toured the Netherlands, performing the piece with the videos that inspired it projected behind the players; they recorded the songs at the end of the tour.

ProductionCredits

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Recorded at Muziekcentrum Frits Philips, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Edited by Teitur at Studio Bloch, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands
Mixed by Hector Castillo
Mastered by Andy Jackson at Tube Mastering

Design by Ben Tousley
Photograph of Nico Muhly and Teitur by Tróndur Dalsgarð
Photograph of Holland Baroque by Wouter Jansen

Teitur appears courtesy of Arlo & Betty Recordings Ltd.
Nico Muhly appears courtesy of St. Rose Management, New York

All songs written by Teitur Lassen and Nico Muhly and published by Arlo & Betty Music (KODA/ASCAP)/St. Rose Music Publishing Co. Inc. & Chester Music Ltd. (ASCAP/PRS). Except track 1, text adapted from "I Was Trying to Describe You" by Richard Brautigan, published by Sterling Lord Literistic; music by Teitur Lassen and Nico Muhly and published by Arlo & Betty Music (KODA/ASCAP)/St. Rose Music Publishing Co. Inc. & Chester Music Ltd. (ASCAP/PRS). Track 7 written by Teitur Lassen, Nico Muhly, and Jeff Cohen, published by Arlo & Betty Music (KODA/ASCAP)/St. Rose Music Publishing Co. Inc. & Chester Music Ltd. (ASCAP/PRS)/As You Wish Music (BMI).

Nonesuch Selection Number

556783

ns_album_releasedate
Album Status
Artist Name
Nico Muhly
Teitur
MusicianDetails

MUSICIANS
Teitur, vocals

Holland Baroque:
Lidewij van der Voort, David Wish, Franc Polman, Aira Maria Lehtipuu, first violins
George Crawford, Maite Larburu, Gabriele Wunsch, Agnieszka Świątkowska, second violins
Esther van der Eijk, Jan Willem Vis, Bernadette Verhagen, violas
Lucy Scotchmer, Tomasz Pokrzywiński, celli
James Munro, violone
Saskia Coolen, recorder
Andreas Arend, lute
Tineke Steenbrink, harpsichord

Conducted by Nico Muhly

Cover Art
UPC/Price
Label
LP+MP3
UPC
075597944259
Label
CD+MP3
UPC
075597944242
Label
MP3
Price
10.00
UPC
075597944297
Label
FLAC
Price
11.00
UPC
075597944266
  • 556783

News & Reviews

  • The forty-disc John Adams Collected Works, a box set of recordings spanning more than four decades of the composer’s career with the label, is out now on Nonesuch. It includes two extensive booklets with new essays and notes by Timo Andres, Julia Bullock, Robert Hurwitz, Nico Muhly, and Jake Wilder-Smith. You can take a look inside in an unboxing video here. Since 1985, when Adams signed exclusively to Nonesuch, the label has released forty-two first recordings and thirty-one all-Adams albums. Collected Works includes thirty-five discs of Nonesuch recordings and five from other labels.

  • "It would be difficult to make an account of all the ways John Adams’s music has influenced me and my work," Nico Muhly writes in his note in the upcoming 40-disc box set John Adams Collected Works, "but in the spirit of writing something personal, I’d like to offer a few perhaps impersonal observations about his work in a more circular, even crabwise, fashion. There are specific places in John’s music where there is a rhyme hidden across decades, relating to an elusive sense of 'meaning' in his music which radiates across his body of work." You can read his complete note from the box set here.

  • About This Album

    Nonesuch Records releases Confessions, a collaboration between the acclaimed American composer Nico Muhly and the Faroese singer/songwriter Teitur, on October 21, 2016, the vinyl edition on November 4. The two musicians began work on the project when Muhly was composer-in-residence at Muziekgebouw Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The songs' lyrics were inspired by or culled from video and commentary the pair found on YouTube. Confessions was recorded with Holland Baroque.

    Hailing from the Faroe Islands, halfway between Norway and Iceland in the North Atlantic, Teitur Lassen (who uses only his first name professionally) has long been a successful pop artist in Europe, winning several Danish music awards, touring internationally, and collaborating with such artists as Seal, Corinne Bailey Rae, and French star Emilie Simon and Nolwenn Leroy. "We came up with this premise of boring videos, home videos," he explains. "It was a time when everyone was posting these meaningless videos. It was just fascinating when we started watching them … The more you watched them the more you started to wonder, 'What is behind this? Why are people doing this?' They are really saying, 'This is really beautiful, this is really sick, this is me,' people confessing things. And that gave us the title for the record."

    "Teitur took a lot of these things," continues Muhly, "and looked at the comments and imagined the world that these people inhabited. We also solicited some anonymous Dutch videos, people telling us things that are unexpected, including this woman who said 'I love the smell of my printer in the morning.' It made me so happy. That smell is so specific. These are not confessions in a dirty way but more like if you went over to a friend's house 10 minutes before they expected you and you got a glimpse into something private. As a songwriter, Teitur focuses on a little detail or a little gesture, and then one can divine bigger content."

    Holland Baroque's mission is "to convince a large and varied audience of the flexibility and vitality of (Baroque) music." As Muhly notes, "They perform standing up, and they are as old school as you'd like, but they chewed into this material really gleefully. It was a kind of magic project actually."

    When he began his tenure at Eindhoven, Muhly says, "I knew I wanted to work with this Baroque ensemble. The distance between contemporary listening and Baroque music is one of the most heartbreaking and interesting things. Most of the music I like is from the 17th century or before. It's a tradition that never stopped—a small tradition, a specific one. There is something incredibly direct about Baroque music and Baroque instruments." He continues, "But it also posed a different challenge. Baroque musicians aren't accustomed to the sorts of rhythms attendant to contemporary music, and that brought another interesting tension to the project."

    The original four songs from Eindhoven worked so well that Teitur and Muhly continued writing. By 2009, they had a concert-length piece comprising the 14 songs on Confessions. Muhly, Teitur, and Holland Baroque toured the Netherlands, performing the piece with the videos that inspired it projected behind the players; they recorded the songs at the end of the tour.

    Credits

    MUSICIANS
    Teitur, vocals

    Holland Baroque:
    Lidewij van der Voort, David Wish, Franc Polman, Aira Maria Lehtipuu, first violins
    George Crawford, Maite Larburu, Gabriele Wunsch, Agnieszka Świątkowska, second violins
    Esther van der Eijk, Jan Willem Vis, Bernadette Verhagen, violas
    Lucy Scotchmer, Tomasz Pokrzywiński, celli
    James Munro, violone
    Saskia Coolen, recorder
    Andreas Arend, lute
    Tineke Steenbrink, harpsichord

    Conducted by Nico Muhly

    PRODUCTION CREDITS
    Recorded at Muziekcentrum Frits Philips, Eindhoven, Netherlands
    Edited by Teitur at Studio Bloch, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands
    Mixed by Hector Castillo
    Mastered by Andy Jackson at Tube Mastering

    Design by Ben Tousley
    Photograph of Nico Muhly and Teitur by Tróndur Dalsgarð
    Photograph of Holland Baroque by Wouter Jansen

    Teitur appears courtesy of Arlo & Betty Recordings Ltd.
    Nico Muhly appears courtesy of St. Rose Management, New York

    All songs written by Teitur Lassen and Nico Muhly and published by Arlo & Betty Music (KODA/ASCAP)/St. Rose Music Publishing Co. Inc. & Chester Music Ltd. (ASCAP/PRS). Except track 1, text adapted from "I Was Trying to Describe You" by Richard Brautigan, published by Sterling Lord Literistic; music by Teitur Lassen and Nico Muhly and published by Arlo & Betty Music (KODA/ASCAP)/St. Rose Music Publishing Co. Inc. & Chester Music Ltd. (ASCAP/PRS). Track 7 written by Teitur Lassen, Nico Muhly, and Jeff Cohen, published by Arlo & Betty Music (KODA/ASCAP)/St. Rose Music Publishing Co. Inc. & Chester Music Ltd. (ASCAP/PRS)/As You Wish Music (BMI).