On my radar: Aaron Dessner’s cultural highlights

Musician and producer Aaron Dessner was born in 1976 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He plays guitar, piano and keyboard for the National, is one half of Big Red Machine alongside Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, and has written and produced for artists including Ed Sheeran and Sharon Van Etten. In 2018 the National won a Grammy for best alternative music album with Sleep Well Beast, and in 2021 Taylor Swift’s Folklore, on which Dessner co-wrote and produced many of the songs, won album of the year. The National’s latest album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, is out now on 4AD. They tour the UK in September.

1. Music

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou

One of my favourite musicians, who died on 26 March aged 99: she was a very influential Ethiopian pianist who became a nun. She had an interesting style that was a blend of classical piano and this improvised, impressionistic, incredibly melodic, wandering style. I’ve listened to her for years and it’s crept into how I play the piano, although I could never approach her brilliance. I know many people love her, but she’s still strangely overlooked because her music isn’t widely available. Her most famous record is Ethiopiques 21: Piano Solo.

2. Book

On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason

The head of my kids’ school gave me this book, which is an Icelandic perspective on why the climate crisis is not widely perceived as a cataclysmic, urgent event, like some other disasters or catastrophes in history. It focuses on the issue of time, and how because climate change is perceived to be slow, a disaster in slow motion – even though it’s actually moving much faster than we realise – it creates some inertia around action. I love nonfiction that has a narrative bent to it.

3. Place

Kinderhook Knitting Mill

There’s a really interesting project near where I live in upstate New York: it’s a 19th-century textile mill that’s been turned into a multi-occupancy food and art emporium. There’s an incredible gallery called September that currently has a beautiful multi-artist exhibit called Freaky Flowers, an eccentric pantry called OK Pantry, and an amazing coffee shop called Morning Bird. I spend a lot of time there. Kinderhook is an old Dutch pre-revolutionary war town that has had a lot of new energy come into it, and it has a strong art community.

4. Poet

Mustafa the Poet

I wanted to draw attention to a poet and musician named Mustafa Ahmed, known as Mustafa the Poet. He’s a Sudanese-Canadian singer-songwriter and poet from Toronto, and he had a beautiful debut album called When Smoke Rises – there’s a song called Stay Alive on there that I find really moving. He’s an interesting lyricist and poet and just a compelling person. He read poetry before the National played the Ottawa folk festival when he was maybe 15 years old, almost 10 years ago. I think he’s someone special who has a unique voice.

5. Shop

Old Style Guitar Shop, Los Angeles

My friend Reuben Cox buys old, undervalued guitars primarily from the 50s and 60s, that were built as cheap starter guitars at the time, and he renovates them using his own interesting techniques. He then creates these very playable, unique pieces, such as the rubber bridge guitar I use on a lot of recordings, including Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore. The shop has all kinds of eccentric instruments and special items – I buy them as gifts for people and I buy them for myself all the time.

6. Restaurant

Casa Susanna, Catskills

Camptown is a renovated vacation bungalow colony from the 30s, near where I live. It has 26 log cabins and an amazing restaurant called Casa Susanna. The chef is Efrén Hernández, who does a seasonal version of modern Mexican cuisine that is really special and constantly changing. All of the tortillas are made in-house, and they use ingredients from local farms. It’s all about the abundance of food and beautiful ingredients in the Hudson Valley. And they have the best margaritas I’ve ever had.