Live in Toronto
Spindle Ensemble; Evergreen Club Gamelan Ensemble
Hidden Notes (spindleensemble.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-toronto)
Live in Toronto, the 2022 collaboration between the seven-musician Toronto group Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan and the UK Spindle Ensemble (violin, cello, piano, marimba), is nothing short of captivating.
Spindle pianist Daniel Inzani’s composition Lucid Living firmly establishes ECCG’s degung gamelan voice, amplified by Spindle’s tight harmonies. Evoking monochrome hues of early morning light, the musical palette is enhanced with the addition of Spindle’s marimba and piano before opening into full daylight. Inzani’s music took me on an impressionistic Joycean journey.
Orpheus by Spindle’s Harriet Riley begins as an homage to Stravinsky’s ballet of the same name. Its Western roots however soon give way to ECCG’s Southeast Asian tones, reminding me of American composer Lou Harrison’s gamelan-centric approach in some of his works. Riley found exquisite ways to blend the 11 instruments at her disposal: the strings (violin and cello) overlap ECCG’s wind (suling, a ring flute) making for an enchanting sonic exchange.
ECCG suling soloist Andrew Timar’s composition Open Fifths: Gardens takes us to the EP’s summit, a work featuring complexity of a kind I associate with the best modal jazz improvisation. The performers play off one another with a sensitivity that finds the fruitful common ground between the musical worlds the two ensembles inhabit. When Timar’s low-sounding suling gambuh invites the cello into the conversation we witness an unanticipated aural blending and the unfolding sound palette celebrates all the voices present.
My only question lies in Open Fifths’ ending. The suspended silence before the last note – reminiscent of a certain Chopin piano Prelude in E Minor – caught me off guard. Open Fifths, like the rest of this EP, is filled with happy surprises.
