Nocturnes, By Kazuo Ishiguro
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Your support makes all the difference.With their gently melancholy wit and bittersweet harmonies, Ishiguro's five "stories of music and nightfall" feel much like the Broadway standards that inspire them.
Here, the laid-back maestro performs elegant and tender riffs around a classic theme. His bruised but hopeful musicians range from a young cellist with a mystery guru to a budding folkie icon.
In "Crooner", a past-it smoothie serenades his soon-to-be-ex wife from a gondola. In the title tale, a sax player, bandage-swaddled after career-saving surgery, rejoices in his trademark version of "The Nearness of You".
With has-beens or with wannabes, Ishiguro never stints on his sympathy for artists gamely facing the music of time.
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