Modern and Contemporary

All Roads
Anthony Cheung
New Focus Recordings FCR263 (newfocusrecordings.com)

To read, or not to read (the booklet notes to a recording) before listening to its music; that is usually the first question that pops into a critic’s head. Apologies need be made, I suppose, to Shakespeare whose beauteous iambic pentameter has been unabashedly appropriated by composer Anthony Cheung for All Roads, an album of rather extraordinary program music. 

There are numerous rewards in store for anyone who delights in following lines of pure musical thought as evinced by the wondrous repertoire proffered by Cheung. Nothing is gratuitous or extraneous, nor can the musical character ever be taken for granted. This is true when you plunge deeply into the song All Roads. Cheung creates the apogee of the album right out of the gates as he inhabits (sort of) Billy Strayhorn’s melancholy and the thinly disguised autobiographical character from Lush Life. Cheung’s anti-hero also staggers elegantly along a similar road which Strayhorn’s protagonist once took as he moped his way home. Pianist Gilles Vonsattel traces the wobbly route home with elliptical, arpeggiated Ellingtonian runs as a sky-dome darkens with the strings of the Escher Quartet. 

Elective Memory and Character Studies are exquisite essays with Cheung’s pianism and Miranda Cuckson’s sinuous violin lines with subtle variations and nuanced inflection. Meanwhile on the enlightened finale, All thorn, but cousin to your rose, lofty theatrics by Paulina Swierczek (soprano) and Jacob Greenberg (piano) bring Vladimir Nabokov and Alexander Pushkin to life again.

Listen to 'All Roads' Now in the Listening Room

Red
Marina Hasselberg
Redshift Records (redshiftrecords.org)

Marina Hasselberg is a Portuguese-born, Vancouver-resident cellist comfortable in Baroque music, contemporary composed music and free improvisation, working in a range that includes Vancouver New Music, Early Music Vancouver, collaborations with other contemporary improvisers like Peggy Lee and Okkyung Lee and gig work with Mariah Carey. Red is her full-length debut, presenting some essential facets of her musical personality, both as soloist and in improvisatory groups.

Red opens with an immediate declaration of independence, Hasselberg spanning centuries as she performs Gabrielli’s Ricercar Primo accompanied by improvising electronic musician Giorgio Magnanensi; they then follow that with S6, a free improvisation. Where the Sand Is Hot will suggest a similarly broad time span. Guitarist Aram Bajakian and drummer Kenton Loewen join in a modal improvisation with Hasselberg plucking intense, shifting, rhythmic patterns that suggest the guembri, a bass lute played for centuries by the Gnawa people of Morocco.

That sometimes playful ability to span genre and time is no deterrent to Hasselberg’s focus. That’s evident in the disc’s most concentrated moment: composer Linda Catlin Smith’s Ricercar, which develops the tone and intensity evident in the earlier Gabrielli in a sustained work. There’s further evidence of the emotional depth of Hasselberg’s playing in the concluding Things Fall Apart, Craig Aalders’ composition for cello and tape. Along the way, Hasselberg finds further opportunities to improvise with Magnanensi, Bajakian, Loewen and violinist Jesse Zubot, in this vivid introduction to a musician as skilful as she is adventurous.

Aspire – Jofre; Piazzolla; Villa-Lobos
Seunghee Lee; JP Jofre; London Symphony Orchestra; Enrico Fagone
Musica Solis MS202208 (musicasolis.com)

Clarinetist Seunghee Lee and Argentian bandeonist/composer/arranger JP Jofre met in New York City where Lee first heard Jofre’s compositions. She was very “intrigued” by the bandoneon which totally makes sense as both their instruments share similar reed sound production. Lee requested something for clarinet and bandoneon. Their resulting collaboration is heard here in eight compositions and arrangements on Lee’s independent label.

Jofre has a perfect, respectful vision of Argentinian music including that for the tango. His Lee commissioned clarinet/orchestra arrangement of Piazzolla’s Tango Étude No.3 is spectacular, remaining true to the Piazzolla sound with lush florid virtuosic clarinet lines and contrasting rhythmic orchestral sounds, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under Enrico Fagone. Lee’s clarinet (instead of voice) and eight cello arrangement of Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No.5 Aria (Cantilena) is slower, with colourful low/high pitch contrasts and tight doubled instrumental lines.  

Six Jofre originals are featured. The upbeat Primavera has clear virtuosic interchanges between clarinet, bandoneon and orchestra. The three-movement Lee-commission Double Concerto for Clarinet, Bandoneon and Orchestra draws from tango, popular and classical music. I. Vals Irreal has short gloomy to energetic clarinet and bandoneon solo/duet ideas above the orchestra. Dramatic exciting III. Aboriginal combines rhythmic instrumental fun to its closing percussive blast. Perfect blending of moving lines and held notes in two clarinet/bandoneon duets, Como el Agua and Sweet Dreams. More tango neoclassical sounds in Tangodromo, and the mood-changing Taranguino, each for clarinet, bandoneon and piano (Steven Beck).  

A must-be-heard exploration of styles passionately composed and performed.

Nick Storring – Music from Wéi 成
Nick Storring
Orange Milk Records (orangemilkrecords.bandcamp.com)

Toronto-based Canadian composer/musician Nick Storring was commissioned by his frequent Toronto collaborator/choreographer Yvonne Ng (of tiger princess dance projects) to compose music for her five-dancer piece Wéi (成). Starting in a December 2017 Banff Centre residency, and completed in 2021, Storring takes a single instrument – the piano – and composes, performs and records layered multi-tracks on grand and upright pianos and a Yamaha computer-controlled acoustic Disklavier piano to create sounds ranging from traditional to prepared piano to full orchestral soundscapes and silences. 

A short Wéi 成 YouTube clip with dancers reaffirms Storring’s detailed understanding of creating dance music. It is equally fantastic as listening music. The opening I introduces the listener to Storring’s multi-faceted music. A contemplative held-note gradual crescendo from silence opens. A piano single line widely spaced lyrical melody follows, then gradual introduction of tonal to atonal chords. A fadeout section is followed by a crescendo of repeated notes, effects, loud rumbling sounds like a dramatic full orchestra then back to more quiet atonal electronic keyboard effects, to closing wobbling held notes fading directly to the next track. Other sections build on these, including subtle tastes of jazz, rock low notes, romantic and contemporary sounds in III;  full orchestral sound with wide-pitched electronic effects in V; and funky musical ideas from drum-like rocking cymbal crashes and guitar-like grooves to the closing quiet ending in VI.

Storring’s experimental compositions and performances, ranging from ambient calm to shorter tense qualities, are inspirational.