Music For Staying Warm is Montreal cellist & composer Justin Wright’s first record and it’s filled with music made by violin, viola, cello, and double bass.
Some people may already be more interested than others, and vice versa, based on that first sentence alone. Funny, no? Some may also be thinking, especially if they knew that Music For Staying Warm was released on Lawrence English’s Room 40 label, that this is going to be all minimalist and lovely. And they’d be correct.
Music For Staying Warm is 34 minutes of composed and improvised slow soothing beauty.
Here’s Justin Wright:
What all of these tracks have in common, aside from being limited to string instruments, is an intention for you to relinquish your sense of anticipation. Conceptually, they were heavily inspired by particular styles of Ethiopian music such as the tizita, which often lacks any resolving cadences to leave you with it’s trademark evocation of longing without resolution.
So I guess there is a certain amount of irony in the name Music for Staying Warm. Drone III definitely isn’t warm. But refuge is just as often acceptance of where you are as it is an escape, and I hope that, whatever I was thinking when I wrote this music, you are able to contextualise it in your own life and find your own meaning.
I was able to easily contextualize Music For Staying Warm, being a lifelong fan of longing without resolution, and the more I listen, the more meaning it gathers. I love it when that happens.
Listen here, buy there: