2025 Grammy for Immersive Audio Album - Who should win?

[privateuniverse]

Hans-Martin Buff interviewed last night after getting his Grammy.

 

[humprof]

Just wanted to share this Substack post about this year's Grammys program by jazz writer Nate Chinen, which starts with a lovely bit about Herbie Hancock & Stevie Wonder's part in the tribute to Quincy Jones--three figures who, between them, have quite a body of work in surround, even if Stevie's portion is unreleased, and all of it came too early for the "Best Surround / Best Immersive" category. Here's an excerpt:

About two and a half hours into the CBS broadcast of the Grammy Awards on Sunday night . . . there came a disarming moment of unhurried, uninflated musical exchange . . . It involved two other first-round Hall of Famers who brought Black music into the borderless cultural mainstream — Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder, each still a paragon of easy articulacy and convivial soul . . . Hancock and Wonder, sharing a piano bench, began playing a song familiar to them both: “Bluesette,” a waltz by the effervescent Belgian harmonica player, guitarist and whistler Toots Thielemans. The song unfolded dreamily, at an ambulatory pace, over strong but discreet accompaniment by the Grammys house orchestra. Wonder played the theme on harmonica, and Hancock offered a chorus of trademark arpeggiation. Then another couple of choruses by Stevie, with Herbie running tastefully up and down the piano behind him. Bringing the performance home, Stevie quoted the main melodic motif of “Killer Joe,” a different jazz standard that Herbie had played to kick off the Quincy celebration.

None of this was daring or revelatory, but is there any wonder (sorry) it felt that way? I mean, a gracefully improvisatory three-minute instrumental duo at the Grammys? There’s no question it took all of the accumulated institutional goodwill — for Q, for Stevie, for Herbie — to make such a thing happen at this point in time. I’d like to encourage us all not to take it for granted, whatever gripes you may have.

https://thegig.substack.com/p/finding-grace-at-the-grammys