Currents

I find that my listening habits have changed drastically throughout the last few years. For me, one of the greatest feelings is revisiting a song or a piece that I had previously disliked for one reason or another, and eventually falling in love with it. Though my appreciation for different practices of listening has changed throughout the years, one aspect has remained: my love for metal music. Although the metal genre was the reason I became a bassist and I have grown to love it for many reasons, one of the pivotal features of the genre holds a special place in my heart: the overwhelming sense of community in hard-hitting rhythm and groove, and the freedom to listen and move to the music in a concert setting. It had never really occurred to me that concert music could exist inside of the same space. I had previously imagined the concert hall in the way in which I experienced it as a young teenager: a place to be as quiet as possible while engaging in internal imagination, a musical space that lacks in chance or error, and a place to sit for hours, trying to find a way to adjust your position in your seat without being heard (we’ve all internally winced at a squeaking chair in a silent concert hall!). I quickly realized that I was very wrong, and was delighted to find so much music that challenged or resisted this aspect, in performance spaces that encouraged engagement. I also realized that these traditions, though confusing to me at the time, had a lot of merit to them. Currents was one of the first pieces that I engaged in merging my own musical experiences, and lives through constant, hard-hitting rhythm. I am so thankful for both spaces, the concert hall and the metal concert, and continue to learn from both of them.