Livingston Taylor’s career as a professional musician has spanned over 50 years, encompassing performance, songwriting, and teaching. Described as “equal parts Mark Twain, college professor, and musical icon, Livingston maintains a performance schedule of more than a hundred shows a year, delighting audiences with his charm and vast repertoire of his 22 albums and popular classics. Livingston has written top-40 hits recorded by his brother James Taylor and has appeared with Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, and Jimmy Buffet. He is equally at home with a range of musical genres – folk, pop, gospel, jazz – and from upbeat storytelling and touching ballads to full orchestra performances. In addition to his performance schedule, Livingston has been a full professor at Berklee College of Music for 30 years, passing on the extensive knowledge gained from his long career on the road to the next generation of musicians. Liv is an airplane-flying, motorcycle-riding, singing storyteller, delighting audiences with his charm for over 50 years.
Pete Muller
“Sometimes less is more,” Pete Muller muses on his riveting new album, One Last Dance. It’s an idea Muller’s been thinking about a lot lately, a mantra that’s not only helped him find meaning and contentment, but also led to some of his most compelling work to date. “I’ve led a curiosity-driven life,” says Muller, a numbers whiz who helped transform Wall Street as we know it while simultaneously building a career as a critically acclaimed singer/songwriter. “I feel grateful to have had adventures that few get to experience.But recently, I’ve been finding more joy in the little things, in the small moments of beauty and wonder that only show themselves when you slow down and pay attention.” One Last Dance is full of just such moments. Recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, England, and featuring guest appearances from Grammy-winner Allison Russell and genre-bending duo SistaStrings, the collection finds Muller producing himself and his band, The Kindred Souls, for the first time. The songs are rich and character-driven, full of subtle observations that manage to reveal fundamental truths about the human condition, and the performances are raw and powerful, fueled by the deep bonds between Muller and his bandmates, who captured the core of the album in just one week. The result is a lush, cinematic blend of roots, rock, pop, and soul, a poignant, deeply vulnerable exploration of what it takes to be present and love with your whole heart.
The Makin Waves Song of the Week is "ICE SS" by the Central Jersey punk act Sally Draper.
