A New Age for New Age

A conversation I overheard during the intermission of Max Richter’s concert in Austin last month provided insights into the revival of dreamy new age music.  Describing the unobtrusive background music he listened to at work, a painfully fashionable twenty-something said “just give me a cello and a tinkling piano and I’m good.”

That guy probably accounts for some of the more than three million Spotify streams of “Staircase Sonata”.  The tranquil ditty is a standout track on Absent Minded, the debut album of the young Icelandic pianist Gabríel Ólafs.  It’s among the dozens of recent releases that fall somewhere between the effervescent work of George Winston and Brian Eno’s innovative sonic wallpaper.

Is Absent Minded shallow new age noodling or weighty ambient music?  I’m not sure it matters.  As someone who worked at a record store during the height of the Windham Hill era in the 1980s, I never derided the middle-aged people who were desperately eager to purchase therapeutic sounds.  I rightly suspected that I’d eventually come to understand their need for aural consolation.


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I write weekly concert recommendations for The Kansas City Star.

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I reviewed Matt Villinger’s All Day at Plastic Sax.

(Original image of Iceland by the spouse of There Stands the Glass.)