Book Review: Time’s Echo: The Second World War, The Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance, by Jeremy Eichler

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

My race against the clock becomes more urgent with each passing day. I’m committed to becoming as fully aware and completely realized as possible before I die.

Most of my free time is devoted to reading and deep listening. Jeremy Eichler’s new study Time’s Echo: The Second World War, The Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance allowed me to indulge in both pursuits.

A combination of history and musicology, Eichler’s work focuses on four classical compositions inspired by the Shoah in the years before, during and after World War II.

Get this: I hadn’t previously heard any of them. Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen, Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor or from Warsaw, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and Dmitri Shostakovich’s  Symphony No 13 (Babi Yar) came as shocking revelations.

I share Eichler’s conviction that music can act as a form of time travel as well as a metaphysical means to commune with the past. Having eagerly absorbed Time’s Echo, I’m able to use the portal with enhanced sophistication.

September 2020 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Screenshot of the English National Opera’s production of Benjamin Britten’s “Death in Venice” by There Stands the Glass.

Top Five Albums

1. Prince- Sign O’ The Times (Super Deluxe)

Eight hours of electrifying brilliance.

2. Steve Arrington- Down to the Lowest Terms: The Soul Sessions

The glorious comeback of the famed funkateer.

3. The Gospel Truth: The Complete Singles Collection

My review.

4. Ainon- Drought

My review.

5. Deftones- Ohms

Veterans in fighting form.

Top Five Songs

1. Alicia Keys featuring Khalid- "So Done"

Me too.

2. Elizabeth Cook- “Stanley by God Terry”

Dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music.

3. Tyler Childers- "Long Violent History"

Southern man.

4. Conway the Machine featuring Flee Lord, Havoc and Lloyd Banks- "Juvenile Hell"

Ain’t no cure for the summertime blues.

5. Gillian Welch- "Picasso"

Both recently released sets of “lost” material are astonishingly excellent.

Top Five Livestreams

1. Bad Bunny- atop a bus in New York City

2. Midwest Chamber Ensemble- at BRC Audio Productions

3. Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle- Verzuz battle

4. Melissa Aldana Quartet- at Smalls

5. Hyde Park Jazz Festival (Alexis Lombre Quartet, Greg Ward’s Rogue Parade, etc.)

I conducted the same exercise in August, July, June, May, April, March, February and January.

Album Review: Ainon- Drought

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I’ve long been troubled by the name of the Missouri based jazz presenter We Always Swing.  I’m more of a swing-optional guy.  The weight of the region’s formidable jazz tradition can be oppressive.  A lot of European improvisers don’t feel any compunction to follow conventional American mandates.  The motto of the young Finnish quartet Ainon could be We’ll Swing If and When We Feel Like It.

Ainon’s debut album Drought occasionally sounds like Charles Mingus’ ensemble using the string quartets of Arnold Schoenberg as an improvisational springboard.  Yet rather than resembling a bitter dose of academia-approved medicine, Drought is a wild and wooly joyride.

Consisting of Aino Juutilainen (founder and cellist), Satu-Maija Aalto (violin, viola and vocals), Suvi Linnovaara (saxophone, clarinet and flute) and Joonas Leppänen (drums), Ainon plays by its own rules.  Veering between ECM-like ambiance, the percussive spiritualism associated with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and conventional string quartet shadings, the serpentine title track of Drought is a distillation of Ainon’s charms.  

Ainon’s nebulous relationship with swing won’t fly in Kansas City.  The band will almost certainly never play in the old stomping grounds of Bill Basie and Jay McShann.  I’ll have to content myself with Drought until either Ainon makes its way to New York, Chicago or St. Louis or I take my first trip to Scandinavia.

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Opera update: I’m on a Benjamin Britten jag, a recent obsession that’s made my viewing of 174 operas in the past 173 days feel as if I’m just getting started.

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Tom Ray may have heaped more abuse on me than any man alive.  And I still love him, partly because his passion for blues, soul and reggae is genuine.  Here’s a de facto 47-minute infomercial about Ray and his St. Louis record store Vintage Vinyl. 

Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

The value of gateway artists is underappreciated. If it took Vanilla Ice for listeners to get to A Tribe Called Quest, so be it. A lot of St. Paul & the Broken Bones fans surely make their way to Otis Redding. That’s fantastic. In my case, the Clash introduced me to Augustus Pablo. I discovered Bob Wills via Merle Haggard. I found Willie Dixon via the Doors.

I’m not annoyed that Nubya Garcia’s debut album Source is being hailed as the 2020 equivalent of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Jazz needs stylish young artists to give the popular press and jazz neophytes something to rally behind. Besides, Source is pretty good.

After enjoying Garcia’s fashionable dispatch from London, I hope a few adventurous listeners turn to the like-minded new release by Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids. Inspired by his mentor Cecil Taylor, Ackamoor founded the Afrocentric spiritual jazz collective almost 50 years ago. Now 69, Ackamoor and his longtime collaborators retain their vitality on Shaman!. The joyous grooves and inclusive sensibility are the best kind of communal folk music.


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I decry the blatant abandonment of social distancing on Kansas City’s jazz scene at Plastic Sax.

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Opera update: I’m currently 80 minutes into my 153rd opera in the past 153 days. A French staging of Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” #151 in my streak, receives my unqualified endorsement. The creepy bits are skin-crawling and the comedic scenes are outrageous.