another post

src/components/layout/Header.astro

@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ const url = new URL(Astro.request.url);
 	<div class="flex sm:flex-col">
 		<a
 			aria-current={url.pathname === "/" ? "page" : false}
-			class="inline-flex items-center grayscale hover:filter-none sm:relative sm:inline-block"
+			class="inline-flex items-center sm:relative sm:inline-block"
 			href="/"
 		>
 			<img

src/content/post/lost-birds/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+---
+title: "What I'm listening to: The Lost Birds"
+description: "A 2022 album from VOCES8, Christopher Tin, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra"
+publishDate: "2024-02-20"
+tags: ["listening"]
+---
+
+This isn't a concert review, it's just an album.
+Every now and then I get stuck in a loop of listening to _the same thing_ again and again, so I figure I may as well write about some of it.
+
+A couple of weeks ago I decided to put on the 'Choral Chill' playlist on Apple Music Classical, which I have a subscription to.
+Then I dozed off on the couch.
+I woke up to ... I can't quite remember exactly, but I do remember being utterly amazed by the purity of the singing I was hearing, and I found that it's this a capella group called [VOCES8](https://voces8.com/).
+
+After listening to a whole bunch of VOCES8 stuff and being utterly amazed with their balance, intonation, tone, ... basically everything, I've decided that this album called *The Lost Birds* is the bit of their output I like the most.
+The music is written by Christopher Tin (who, with Civilisation IV's *Baba Yetu*, was the first composer to win a Grammy for video game music), and draw on poems by the likes of Emily Dickinson.
+
+Each track is incredibly touching, and I do enjoy the cyclical nature of the album: you see musical themes from the first piece coming back at the end, but in a much more powerful manner.
+(Classical purists will say that that's lazy or something.
+Look, Bach did the same with the *Goldberg Variations*.
+Don't be a classical purist.)
+
+Of course, the fact that it's all about birds aided me greatly in falling for it.
+(I love birds!)
+The poems themselves are beyond reproach, but I think what's really interesting for me is that setting their words to music makes me feel each word much more than I would if I were just reading it.
+I've never managed to get into poetry: it's a sort of 'language' which I've never quite understood.
+But *music* (or, at least, classical and classical-adjacent music) is a language that I get, and in this context it seems to act as a kind of bridge for me.
+
+I like the look of the Apple Music embed, so that's what I've put here, but you can get all of this on YouTube too for free.
+[Here's a link to the official playlist.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lYhND404bk&list=OLAK5uy_l4aJPR2bRtgGdqnPl_WlO-7lEdvfPFIUY)
+The only quibble I have with YouTube is that the transition between successive pieces isn't seamless, which breaks the *attacca* pieces, such as *All That Could Never Be Said* into *I Shall Not See the Shadows*.
+
+<iframe allow="autoplay *; encrypted-media *; fullscreen *; clipboard-write" frameborder="0" height="450" style="width:100%;max-width:660px;overflow:hidden;border-radius:10px;" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" src="https://embed.music.apple.com/us/album/the-lost-birds/1635380205"></iframe>

src/content/post/ning-zee-brahms/index.md

@@ -1,13 +1,13 @@
 ---
 title: "Ning Feng, Zee Zee: Brahms violin sonatas"
-description: "This concert made me actually start a blog"
+description: "10/10 Beautiful, intimate music-making. This concert made me actually start a blog."
 publishDate: "2024-01-25"
-tags: ["classical", "live", "wigmore-hall", "10"]
+tags: ["classical-live", "wigmore-hall", "10"]
 ---
 
 ## Programme
 
-**25 Jan 2024, Wigmore Hall, 19:30**
+**19:30, 25 January 2024, Wigmore Hall**
 
 Ning Feng violin<br/>
 Zee Zee piano
@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ A particularly touching moment was the high A at the end of the first movement o
 
 It's so tempting to play the high A loud, because it's the very peak of the phrase.
 (And Brahms *does* write *sempre cresc.* the bar before this!)
-Instead of that, though, Ning went into what was almost a mezzo-piano, which (to me) was wistful and poignant: it seemed like something beautiful in the clouds, tangible, but unreachable.
+Instead of that, though, Ning went into what was almost a mezzo-piano, which to me was wistful and poignant: it conjured an image of something beautiful in the clouds, tangible, but unreachable.
 
 I really thought the whole set was incredibly beautiful.
 I don't know what the rest of the audience was thinking, because somehow I was the only person to give a standing ovation at the end. 🤷‍♀️