A Murakami novel without mention of music would be like a fish without water; the author began as a jazz club owner in Tokyo and has famously written about his passion for music since the very beginning.
Murakami is no less a fan of rock and roll than he is of jazz, though. His blasé references to the works of Schubert or Mozart are just as frequent as his mentions of The Beatles or The Beach Boys, old favourites from his days of student protests in Tokyo in the late 1960s.
A 26-hour long playlist curated from works mentioned in Haruki Murakami’s latest novel Killing Commendatore has just appeared on Spotify.
In Haruki Murakami’s Fitzgerald-esque Killing Commendatore, music is much more than thematic. His literary style is built on musical foundations, and the musicality of his prose reads like a jazz composition.
He is known for his obscure emphasis on seemingly mundane domesticities; cooking pasta, impersonal sex, cleaning, running. Killing Commendatore welcomes visual art, mostly painting, to Murakami’s repertoire of intense expertise.
A curated collection of music from Sheryl Crow, Puccini, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Mozart, Thelonious Monk, Verdi, Dylan, The Doors, Beethoven, Bruce Springsteen, Roberta Flack, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and more have made their way onto a Spotify playlist, inspired by and dedicated to the authors’s latest work.
You can stream over 26 hours of Killing Commendatore-inspired music below:
Recently Murakami recently hosted a Tokyo FM show called Murakami Radio. Taking to the DJ seat, he played 55 minutes of some of his favourite tunes.
He also recently announced, in his first press conference in 37 years, that he will be donating his personal collection of 10,000+ records to his alma mater, Waseda University.
Via Open Culture.
