R.I.P. Hal Willner, 1957-2020

Sadly, music curator deluxe Hal Willner has passed away after a battle with COVID-19. Check out a few of his projects below.

Writes Dougie Bowne.... I used to joke about Hal, “he's my favorite kind of producer - he hires the right musicians, and leaves them the hell alone while they work shit out.” The joke, as they all must, wrapped itself around some truth, but what Hal did was make great art. The mysterious methods that were his and his alone might have looked like luck, accident, or sorcery, as if they weren’t being directed, but of course they were. He made great shit happen over and over and over again, putting together wildly important shows, producing beautiful, meaningful albums, introducing people to each other and all of us to ideas, and humor and beauty, and that takes some doing, it isn’t easy, though he made it look like it was. He made shit that could make you cry like a train, or laugh like a baby. He was an artist by any measure you might want to call up into play for deciding who to call by that name. And his loveably grumpy sarcasm could never conceal the fact that he loved more stuff - more musics, more TV shows, more films, more poems, more people, more everything than just about anyone I ever met. And I love him. 
Hal Willner April 6, 1956 – April 6, 2020 "No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream, trapped in its disappearance, sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worshipping each other, worshipping the God included in it all—longing or inevitability?—while it lasts, a Vision—anything more?" Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg

LINKS
Rolling Stone Tom Waits pens tribute to Hal Willner
Brooklyn Vegan 32 Videos of Hal Willner's 80s series Night Music
New York Times Hal Willner's vanishing weird New York