Music in Your Gardens: Hiss Golden Messenger
We're proud to present Hiss Golden Messenger as a part of Music in Your Gardens, a free eight-week online concert series showcasing renowned artists who call Durham and the surrounding area home.
On July 1 at 7 PM ET, we'll premiere a recorded performance by Hiss Golden Messenger online, free of charge, on our website and on our YouTube page. The film will be accompanied by a live YouTube chat with Hiss Golden Messenger, who will answer questions from viewers.
Hiss Golden Messenger is the folk project of Durham musician M.C. Taylor, with a sound that David Bowie - yes, that David Bowie - once called "mystical country, like an eerie yellowing photograph." Taylor's latest release is a live album, Forward, Children, whose proceeds will benefit the Durham Public Schools Foundation and aid its COVID-19 relief efforts. Taylor - whose fall tour for his album, Terms of Surrender, likewise supported the Durham Public Schools Foundation - is also a longtime Duke Performances partner artist. In 2015, at Reynolds Industries Theater, he premiered the song cycle Heart Like a Levee, the result of a commission through Duke Performances' From the Archives initiative. The initiative led Taylor to a series of William Gedney photographs documenting rural Kentucky, housed in Duke's Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Like a Gedney photograph, the music of Hiss Golden Messenger evokes a vulnerable and sensual form of Americana.
