Lido Pimienta: In Darkness We Shine

Boundaries of culture, time, and place become blurred on Lido Pimienta’s musical map. The Colombian, Canada-based singer, songwriter, and multidisciplinary artist’s profoundly personal playlist embraces works by kindred spirits—those who see classical music as a dynamic genre, open to new ideas yet part of a living tradition. “I am extremely blessed to share intimate and spiritual relationships with half of the artists featured here,” she tells Apple Music Classical. “Even if I didn’t know them, I would still be their fan. Thank God for women composers showing us the way, thank God for the blurry lines between classical, pop, and jazz.”

In Darkness We Shine offers a gentle yet potent antidote to the despair and dissatisfaction felt by so many, as you may hear in such hauntingly beautiful tracks as Lacuna Vespers and Paula Matthusen’s ultimately joyful Such is Now the Necessity. The playlist’s shadow side runs from Owen Pallett’s opening track, with its consoling lyrics, and Angélica Negrón’s “The hole” to Gabriela Lena Frank’s Canto de la Lunita and the unsettling “Much More” from Nathalie Joachim’s Note to Self.

“We are all dancers in the dark, surviving impending doom in ever-regressing uncertain futures, clinging on to life with the force of a million wild horses,” notes Pimienta. “For this playlist I selected songs that inspire me to love in times of loss and despair—this is a recurrent theme in all that I do. I naturally gravitate to the dark for the thrill of finding the light.”