Different Stones - Canadian Music for
Multiple Flutes
Mark Takeshi McGregor
Redshift (www.redshiftmusic.org)
The seven beautifully crafted compositions by young composers, magnificently multi-tracked at the Banff Centre for the Arts by Vancouver flutist, Mark Takeshi McGregor, make this CD of music for multiple flutes of interest beyond the ranks of flute aficionados and beleaguered university flute choir directors.
Meaning of music lies in the way it creates the feeling of going somewhere, moving ahead, departing and arriving. Each piece on the disc does this, developing organically and convincingly, not as in traditional music by the repetition and variety of melody and rhythm, but with different musical elements, such as dynamics, busy-ness, expanding ranges, abrupt stops, silences, and textural contrasts. Apparently random beginnings and endings of long tones in Jennifer Butler’s Sky, for example, provide both repetition and variety, and the addition of short two and three-note tonal patterns moves the piece ahead. The simple addition of a six-note “counter ostinato” to the four-note opening ostinato in Christopher Kovarik’s Dectet similarly creates a feeling of forward motion, and the climactic chord two minutes into the piece creates the feeling of having arrived at a pivotal point.
This CD is an instructive primer in a genre of contemporary composition, which, shall we say, maximises minimalism. As such, it is of interest well beyond the coteries of flute and composition cognoscenti, generating meaning by means that are equally archetypal and yet uniquely and recognisably related to the aesthetic sensibility of our time.
