This month's episode of Music In Time, "Quiet Gratitude Vol. 2," continues a tradition begun Thanksgiving Week of 2024, when host Evan McCormick used ambient music to reflect on those things we have to feel grateful for, even when the times seem especially heavy and dark: "the simplest things," he wrote then, "the joys of everyday life, the quiet of the natural world, the warmth of community (like this one, on WGXC)." Well, things are no less complicated or dark this year, so McCormick is back with another installment, this time featuring jazz selections that create space for such gratitude and reflection as we approach the end of another year. 

Playlist
Blue Cloud - Billy Taylor Trio (1955)
The Quiet Time - Teddy Charles Tentet (1956)
Violets For Your Furs - Jutta Hipp and Zoot Sims (1957)
Let's Fall In Love - Stan Getz & Gerry Mulligan (1957)
Moonlight In Vermont - Earl Fatha Hines (1958)
Laura - Toshiko Ashiyoki (1958)
Dear Kathy - Benny Golson (1963)
All Alone - Mal Waldron (1966)
Stardust - Lee Konitz (1979)
Total Falsch - Bohren & Der Club of Gore (2020)

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Music does not just exist. It exists in specific times and places and in the sonic world of each individual listener who engages with it. That’s the basic idea behind "Music in Time," which explores the social and political context in which songs and albums emerge, are listened to, and reflected on over the years. Host Evan McCormick uses different formats to play with the idea of music in time—sometimes focusing on a single album and detailing the social and political circumstances surrounding its release, sometimes putting together playlists that explore a theme or concept in songs through the years. Each broadcast asks: how is music shaped by its own historical moment, and, in turn, how does music shape the histories that we remember?

By day, Evan McCormick is a historian at Columbia University, where he uses oral history interviews to understand how people remember and make sense of the past. By night, McCormick is a music lover and singer-songwriter, recording under the stage name Egan Caufield. For most of his life these two worlds remained separate, but after relocating to Catskill in 2020, he chose to bring history and music together over the airwaves, and "Music in Time" was born.