Modern and Contemporary

Lifeblood
Raphael Weinroth-Browne
Independent (raphaelweinroth-browne.bandcamp.com/album/lifeblood)

Thirty-three year old Ottawa-raised,Toronto-based cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne has already had a long and diverse career, and this latest offering demonstrates his rocket trajectory has no plans to slow down. Weinroth-Browne’s early work in contemporary classical music has grounded his solid technique, and his growth and expertise continue to be explosive. From his early years with Norwegian prog-rock band Leprous in 2016, and studio albums too numerous to mention, his experience and breadth of skill defy description. Continuing from his early days with the duo Kamancello, Muskox, The Visit, and Glass Armour, where Weinroth-Browne plays a multitude of instruments, this artist has refused to be stapled down as a classical player. Often described as a “Black Metal” cellist, his growing stage presence and elevated production quality in sound, film, dance compositions and live performances has given him a cult-like following. 

With Lifeblood, Weinroth-Browne pushes further into his Rock/Metal Opera journey, self-producing some of his best work yet. With a Goth-like presentation, including artwork and photographs of body art both devoted to snakes, this album leaves no room for doubt as to where this artist is going. 

From the pulsating Neanderthal to the transcendent, starry, restful motion of Winterlight and the heavy-metal Possession, the precision of every composition keeps the work taught, each piece expanding to an audio version of wide-screen cinema. The final Glimmering‘s freely phrased opening gives way to layered pizzicato lines overlain with cello upon cello upon cello, painting colours over colours and topped with fervent motion upon motion. Even being familiar with Weinroth-Browne’s style, this track’s mixing, panning and overall production really shines the album to a close.

The Laws of Nature
Andrew Staniland
Leaf Music AS2025 (andrewstaniland.com/thelawsofnature)

A new release on Leaf Records features the latest developments on a new musical instrument, called JADE, developed over the last decade by the multi-faceted composer and musical theorist Andrew Staniland. He has won many awards in Canada throughout this century and was the TSO Affiliate Composer in 2006. A professor at Memorial University St. John’s Newfoundland, he founded their ElectroAcoustic Lab where, with his cross-disciplinary research team, he has been developing the JADE concept. This is a radically new digital music instrument and one of its innovative features is that it will respond to direct brain impulses transmitted through a band worn on the head. 

The sounds of JADE seem to have limitless potential and it contains myriad musical voices, textures and environments that constitute these pieces. There are six compositions that at first can elide into one another, and there is a six-movement piece called The Laws of Nature, which is intended as a single piece although there is still great variety in the different sections that make it up. 

The actual substance of the sounds used still seem to have been collected from reality in an impressive array of sampling techniques. Staniland has created a wide variety of new voices and effects, in a basically tonal setting. The ambient soundstage is an illusion of JADE, which gives the music an atmosphere to resound in. The effect is of being in a complex musical environment, and the listener is mostly unaware that the music is entirely electronic, although some sections are clearly electronically derived. 

Since it is so rich and varied, this CD can be listened to as a stimulating journey through seemingly endless new vistas. Although this music was developed as an accompaniment for the Kittiwake Dance Company, it also stands as a piece in its own right, but you will not necessarily go away humming the tunes.

Listen to 'The Laws of Nature' Now in the Listening Room

The Honeybee Twist
Andy Haas; Brian Skol
Resonantmusic 021 (andyhaas.bandcamp.com/album/the-honeybee-twist)

New York based Canadian saxophonist Andy Haas is back with a “duo” release featuring his diverse sax playing, circular breathing technique, special effects, and improvising brilliance with the equally gifted Toronto-based percussionist and drummer Brian g Skol. Recorded in Toronto in 2024, the two musicians create and combine their unique avant-garde experimental sounds.

The slightly over 30-minute-long release features eight improvised, experimental tracks. The Eagle and Prometheus features ascending melodies and repeated saxophone notes and crashing cymbals and drums.  A bouncy groove is prevalent. The long-held saxophone notes add variety with the intense percussion. The title track opens with a “crunching” saxophone sound, then repeated notes alongside dramatic percussion and drums. Then a more melodic, slightly atonal, detached melody is like hearing the bee flying. The two musicians’ consistent, tight sense of time is especially forefront in Myth Hysteria Blues where the more melodic sax lines with percussion hits have a quasi blues sound. 

To be expected in experimental improvisations, Haas and Skol incorporate numerous musical elements which can create some difficult and challenging listening. Their complex effects, shifting dynamics,  atonal melodies, subtle touches of grooves like jazz and blues, drones and wide-ranging percussion add to the originality and beauty of this music, especially with each repeated listening.

Listen to 'The Honeybee Twist' Now in the Listening Room

Gorécki’s World of the Piano
Jarred Dunn; Anna Gorécka
ATMA ACD2 2901 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/goreckis-world-of-the-piano)

To all the world,  Henryk Gorécki’s best-known type of music is long-form – the symphonic template – the most celebrated of which is his hauntingly marvellous Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, the Third Symphony, that has become a million seller – made so by the breathtaking sonorities of Dawn Upshaw. It was matched – possibly made more rich, transparent and meaningful – by the Kilanowicz National Radio Symphony Orchestra and a more spiritual reading by Zofia Kilanowicz. 

But for all the emotionally and powerful symphonic and choral works, little is known, much less performed, of Gorécki’s smaller offerings. Spanning 1955 to 2008, Gorécki’s World of the Piano presents his complete works for one and two pianos, many composed in the dark and difficult context of post-war Poland. Jarred Dunn performs the solo works and is joined by the composer’s daughter Anna Gorécka for the duets.

Toccata For Two Pianos Op.2, the brilliant outburst of Four Preludes Op.1, the shimmering quietude of the Berceuse Op.9, the longest of the Chopinesque miniatures in his Intermezzo, and the extended Piano Sonata No.1, Op.6 testify to the diversity of Gorécki’s output. The music here gives full reign to his characteristically high, shimmering, patiently sustained chords along with bell-like ones which mirror the intervals confined to shorter, more tentative melodic cells. Although Gorécki’s piano works are difficult to give expression to, clearly Gorécka and Dunn play them with deep meaning and absolute mastery.