Piece Comment

Review of Andrew Bird


This story about a reclusive musician comes to us from producer Jonathan Menjivar. Menjivar currently works at WHYY's Fresh Air, but he put together this 5-minute piece when he was working as an independent producer. He's given us a carefully designed story that not only suggests the sense of solitude that musician Andrew Bird must experience when he creates his music, but that sense of solitude is amplified as we hear from Bird only in his own words, without the mediation of a narrator.

This piece works well as a stew of unmitigated thoughts in a suspension of music, and it should serve as a ray of hope and to producers who struggle to put structure to un-narrated radio stories. Menjivar shows us that it can be done, if we keep our ears tuned to pacing and we can bear to pare our tape down to the bare essentials.