When asked what he’s been doing lately, Blake Mills says he’s been “listening, writing, playing, and watching my social life wither away like the ice caps.”
 
Since quietly releasing his debut album, Break Mirrors, which critics hailed as one of the best albums of 2010, Mills has been consistently busy. He’s produced recordings for The Alabama Shakes, Sara Watkins, Conor Oberst and Fiona Apple, with whom he toured extensively in 2013 and 2014. His services as a guitarist have been frequently called upon by Rick Rubin & Don Was, and he’s played with Lucinda Williams, Neil Diamond, Julian Casablancas, Band of Horses, and Norah Jones. Though perhaps his most significant endeavor has been creating the highly anticipated second solo album, HEIGH HO, due September 2014.
 
“The goals on my first album were experimentation and discovery,” Mills says. “The goals for HEIGH HO were sonics and capturing performance. I love how my first album sounds, but I’ve heard a number of records released in the last 4 years that seem to sonically focus on making things ‘lo-fi’ and reverb-drenched, so I felt compelled to create a combination of sounds I’d never heard before for this material. I also wanted to have more input from other musicians, instead of doing everything myself.”
 
To that end, Mills asked several of his musical heroes − Jim Keltner, Tony Berg, Don Was, Jon Brion, Benmont Tench, Rob Moose, Gabe Kahane, Mike Elizondo, Griffin Goldsmith, and Fiona Apple (who duets on the slow-burning “Seven” and timeless sounding “Don’t Tell Our Friends About Me”) − to collaborate on what would become HEIGH HO.
 
“One of the reasons I think these sessions worked out so well is because many of these musicians are also world class record producers,” Mills says. “Their performances on this record revealed the spirit of this album. It reflects the spontaneity, maturity and tastefulness of my all-time favorite records.”
 
“Blake arranged the music the way that Cézanne would’ve filled a canvas,” Don Was notes of his experience playing in Blake’s band. “He’s a mind-blowingly great artist with the type of deep vision that is the hallmark of true genius. It’s so inspiring for musicians to play with a cat like that! If he asked us to play in orange, we wanted to give him a shade that burned so brightly as to blind the unsuspecting.”
 
Recorded at the legendary Ocean Way studios in a room built for Frank Sinatra & used by everyone from Bob Dylan to The Rolling Stones, Mills created an album that references a range of genres without really belonging to any. “I think it’s truly necessary to make music that is without genre,” he says. “Fiona Apple once said that there are only two types of music: honest and dishonest. That honesty is the quality that I first respond to in other people’s art, and what I aspire to achieve in my own work as well.”
 
Lyrically inspired by “under cast situational awareness, a weakness for clarity, and the impossible dream of someday being understood,” HEIGH HO opens with “If I’m Unworthy,” a stark, heartfelt track that takes on the weight of love with humbling grace and concludes with “Curable Disease” which was finished with a little help from collaborator Jackson Brown.
 
“He was the first person I played that song for, and I’d initially written it as ‘love is just a curable disease’. It made more of a generalized statement. He recommended making it a suggestion; ‘love may be a curable disease’. That really helped reveal the sentiment of that song with just one word.”
 
“When I first started writing for this record, I tried to be a little less personal and more topical, or character-based. But I couldn’t do it. Nothing I wrote felt honest to me. Eventually, I accepted that I can write about my own experiences without feeling self absorbed.” HEIGH HO by BLAKE MILLS will be available on Record Collection/Verve Records September 16, 2014.
 
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Hailed by NPR’s Fred Child as “one of the groups that has really helped to shape the future of classical music,” yMusic is a sextet of young performers equally comfortable in the overlapping classical and pop music worlds. The “six hip virtuosi” (Time Out NY) play a unique combination of instruments: string trio, flute, clarinet and trumpet. This exciting orchestration has inspired an expanding repertoire of works by some of today’s most important artists. Indie rock luminaries Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) and Ryan Lott (Son Lux), have crafted instrumental works specifically for the ensemble. On yMusic’s debut album, “Beautiful Mechanical,” the group pairs these works with pieces by emerging composers Judd Greenstein, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Gabriel Kahane, a result that was recently named Time Out New York’s #1 Classical Record of 2011.
 
In addition to performing its own repertoire, yMusic serves as a ready-made collaborative unit for bands and songwriters. In the 2012-13 season, yMusic launches new projects with Dirty Projectors, Gabriel Kahane and Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire. Past collaborations have included work with The National, St. Vincent, My Brightest Diamond, Aaron and Bryce Dessner, Ra Ra Riot, and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. These affiliations have brought yMusic to prominent stages around the world including Amsterdam’s Muziekgebuow, New York’s Beacon Theater, and the Krannert Center in Champagne-Urbana. yMusic can be heard on Dirty Projectors’ “Swing Lo Magellan,” Son Lux’s “We Are Rising,” My Brightest Diamond’s “All Things Will Unwind,” and a forthcoming record of compositions by Richard Reed Parry.

 
yMusic was created in 2008 to bring a classical chamber music aesthetic to venues outside the traditional concert hall. Its members have individually toured and recorded with artists such as Bon Iver, Bjork, Peter Gabriel, Antony and the Johnsons, Ryuichi Sakamoto, The National, Rufus Wainwright, Grizzly Bear, Meredith Monk, Yo-Yo Ma, The New York Philharmonic, David Byrne and Sufjan Stevens.