One went to this concert as one might have gone to an opera performance by Richard Strauss at the beginning of the 20th century: serious, concentrated, in great tension and joyfully expecting the peaks of ecstasy of the evening.
Two months earlier “Ys” had been released, an album of five songs on which the young harpist had taken her complex song art to narrative heights, which Van Dyke Parks had illustrated in a congenial way with his arrangements. Now Newsom would perform the work in concert accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. The notion that “independent” in a pop context is at the same time…
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