Julian Bream (1933-2020)
Filed under the name Julian · June 6, 2026
Julian Bream spent his career reviving interest in early music for the guitar, basically doing centuries ago what my generation does now every time we discover vinyl records or bring back some fashion trend our parents wore unironically the first time around. He's credited with getting whole audiences interested again in music that had mostly been forgotten, which takes a specific kind of patient, unglamorous work, playing something old and undervalued convincingly enough that people start caring about it again instead of dismissing it as outdated. I'll admit classical guitar isn't exactly what's playing on my phone between shifts, mostly K-pop and whatever prestige show I'm three episodes behind on, but I respect the instinct behind what Bream did, taking something people had written off as irrelevant and proving it still had something real to offer. Culture doesn't actually move in one straight line forward, no matter how much it feels that way when you're twenty. Sometimes the most interesting move is backward, done well.