Description

Nonesuch Records releases mandolinist, singer, and songwriter Chris Thiles Laysongs. The album is his first truly solo album: just Thile, his voice, and his mandolin, on new recordings of six original songs and three covers, all of which contextualise and banter with his ideas about spirituality. Recorded in a converted upstate New York church during the pandemic, Laysongs centrepiece is the three-part Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth, which was inspired by C.S. Lewiss The Screwtape Letters. The album also features a song Thile wrote about Dionysus; a performance of the fourth movement of Béla Bartóks Sonata for Solo Violin; God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot based on Buffy Sainte-Maries adaptation of a Leonard Cohen poem; a cover of bluegrass legend Hazel Dickens Wont You Come and Sing for Me; and an original instrumental loosely modelled after the Prelude from J.S. Bachs Partita for Solo Violin in E Major. He performs solo shows in the US this spring and also continues his popular Sunday afternoon online masterclass series, Music Is Life Is Music.

Thile, who was raised in a Christian household, explains the inspiration for Laysongs, from a backstage conversation with Nonesuchs Chairman Emeritus Bob Hurwitz, who told him, You should do a God-themed record of some kind, its all over your work. It is a lifelong obsession of mine, even post-Christianity, what the impact of that kind of devotion to any organised religion is. When the world went into COVID lockdown in the spring of 2020 and the public radio show Thile had hosted, Live from Here, ended its run, he finally had time to seriously contemplate this idea. Again, Hurwitz supplied a nudge, encouraging him to make a snapshot of his experience of the pandemic.

Thiles wife, the accomplished actor Claire Coffee, served as Laysongs co-producer: She has incredible taste and narrative intuition. She was able to help me weave the original and non-original material together. During the summer of 2020, the family was temporarily living in Hudson, NY, where they found a recording studio, Future-Past, in an old church. I went in there to look at the space and instantly felt so at home, Thile recalls. I loved the amount of sound around the sound. I had two sonic collaborators on this record: the tremendous engineer Jody Elff and that church.

Thile realised and illustrates in these songs that his greatest spiritual sustenance comes from communion with others. I was more than ever before craving that thing singing with people, making music with people, but particularly that very selfless kind of music making that happens in church. At best you arent thinking about yourself or even about the people youre making music with. Youre all just doing it together and its about something else. Its really beautiful. And its maybe the only thing about organised religion that I miss.

MacArthur Fellow Chris Thile is the founding member of Punch Brothers, which a Boston Globe reviewer has called the tightest, most impressive live band I have ever seen. The groups five Nonesuch albums are Punch, Antifogmatic, Whos Feeling Young Now?, The Phosphorescent Blues, and the Grammy-winning All Ashore. Thiles other Nonesuch releases include a duo album with guitarist Michael Daves, two records with bassist Edgar Meyer (one of which won a Grammy), a Bach album with Yo-Yo Ma and Meyer, a duet album with jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, and the T Bone Burnettproduced soundtrack to the Coen brothers Inside Llewyn Davis. As a soloist, Thile has released six albums most recently an album of his songs of the week from Live from Here called Thanks for Listening. He spent his formative years as a member of the Grammy Awardwinning, multi-platinum selling band Nickel Creek, which reunited in 2014 for its highest-charting album to date, A Dotted Line, and an extensive tour. For four years, Thile hosted public radio favourite Live from Here with Chris Thile (formerly known as A Prairie Home Companion).

By the time he was a teenager, Chris Thile was already a bluegrass prodigy on mandolin; hes since evolved into a MacArthur Grant-winning, genre-defying musical genius. NPR

The virtuoso mandolinist Chris Thile is that rare being: an all-round musician who can settle into any style, from bluegrass to classical.
Guardian