William Eggleston

William Eggleston is one of the world's most celebrated photographers. Since the early 1960s, he has produced snapshot-like depictions of everyday objects and scenes in the Deep South, first in black-and-white and later in color. Given the naturalness of his work, he became a pioneer in establishing color film as a legitimate medium of artistic pursuit in photography. Fewer people know him as a virtuoso pianist. He has been pursuing music throughout his life, but has rarely performed for anyone other than close friends. (He did, however, record with Big Star on their version of "Nature Boy" during the sessions for their third and final album. Their connection was personal. His cover photo adorns the band's Radio City album.) Eggleston's 2017 debut album, entitled Musik, consists of instrumentals performed on an 88-key Korg synthesizer in his Memphis home over the course of several years during the '90s and captured by using the machine's internal memory. The album was assembled by producer Tom Lunt, who became aware of the photographer's musicianship via the 2005 documentary <I>William Eggleston in the Real World. In 2007, a Memphis-based friend introduced him to Eggleston's son Winston, director of the Eggleston Artistic Trust. With permission and cooperation from the Eggleston family, Lunt went through the whole catalog of the Korg recordings stored on ten digital audiotapes, digital compact cassettes, and nearly 50 floppy disks. Musik is made up almost entirely of Eggleston's own compositions and improvisations. It was released by Secretly Canadian in the fall of 2017. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi