Modern and Contemporary

Andrew Paul MacDonald – Music of the City and the Stars
Andrew Paul MacDonald; Quatuor Saguenay
Centrediscs CMCCD 29622 (cmccanada.org/shop/cd-cmccd-29622)

Andrew Paul MacDonald is a composer and guitarist who taught music at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, QC from 1987 to 2021. His compositions have been performed around the world and he has released dozens of works for chorus, brass quintet, opera and orchestra. Music of the City and Stars is his 20th album and has MacDonald on archtop guitar paired with the Quatuor Saguenay string quartet (formerly the Alcan Quartet). There are two multi-movement works on the album, Lyra and Restless City. Lyra is played in seven short movements with no breaks and tells the story of the god Hermes’ invention of the lyre. The titles (including Orpheus and the Argonauts, Orpheus and Hades, The Death of Eurydice) are suggestive of the moods the movements work through. MacDonald’s electric guitar is distanced sonically from the quartet by his use of chorus and delay throughout this piece. String quartet and jazz guitar is an unusual and intriguing combination which MacDonald has the composition skills and guitar chops to bring off very well. 

Restless City is jazz inspired and his archtop guitar often blends in with the quartet. The three movements – Bird Talk, Dameronics and Monkin’ Around – refer to the jazz legends Charlie Parker, Tadd Dameron and Thelonious Monk. Bird Talk’s guitar lines are a bit boppy while the quartet plays angular lines with a staccato edge. Dameronics is slower with some beautiful harmonies reminiscent of the jazz composer›s style. Monkin’ Around contains much lively interplay between the guitar and quartet parts which are sometimes lighthearted and at other times intense. Music of the City and Stars is a thoughtful and entrancing collaboration.

Bekah Simms – Ghost Songs
Thomas Morris; Amanda Lowry; Kalun Leung; Joseph Petric
people | places | records PPR 031 (peopleplacesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ghost-songs)

Bekah Simms’ most recent release, Ghost Songs, continues to explore her expert electronic music compositional ideas in four works for solo instrumentalists. The first three tracks are part of her mind-boggling Skinscape series, featuring the interaction of a soloist playing traditional/extended techniques live, with an electronically disembodied version of themselves. Skinscape II (2019), with soloist Thomas Morris (oboe), combines contrasting oboe and electronic sounds which at times melt together, or contrast like the high-pitched oboe notes above a softer electronic background. In Skinscape I (2017), flutist Amanda Lowry’s superb extended techniques, fast trills and melodic lines are coupled by such gratifying electronic effects as spooky growling, pitch-bending tones and airy background sounds. Skinscape III (2021) features loud attention-grabbing electronic wailing effects, trombonist Kalun Leung’s held notes and the almost painful gritty sounding electronics, which subside with the calm closing trombone. In an acousmatic version of Jubilant Phantoms (2021), Simms combines fragments from accordionist Joseph Petric’s recordings with electronic echoing chordal drones. The combination of higher pitched accordion sounds and lower electronic pitches creates an especially beautiful effect.

Recording and production are fantastic! Simms’ compositions range from disconcerting and perhaps troubling sounds to calming breathy sound environments. Her electro and acoustic instrumental sound combinations open the door to a new world of music all her own.

The Canadian Music Centre has just announced Simms as the winner of the 2022 Harry Freedman Recording Award for Metamold, a work for large ensemble and electronics. Metamold was a triple commission from Crash Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, and NYNME as a result of Simms winning the prestigious 2019 Barlow Prize.

Ecology of Being
Duo Concertante
Marquis Classics MAR 81625 (duoconcertante.com) 

The fundamental task of finding one’s way in the world and locating true measures of meaning can be elusive as we attempt to understand how purpose relates to quality of existence. To create a successful recording, perhaps one way to begin understanding the immense implications of being is to commission a collection of new works for violin and piano. With six brilliant new works performed with world-class expressiveness and musicality, Newfoundland’s Duo Concertante has released a powerful and deeply moving album. 

The Canadian composers were asked to respond to earth’s climate emergency and to consider our interconnectedness with respect to the rapidly changing environment and the future implications of our current decisions to act or to not act. Ian Cusson delivers an utterly tragic response that is interrupted by a joyous dance, a contrast that is jarring and disturbing, in a work titled The Garden of Earthly Delights. Carmen Braden’s dusty The Seed Knows, is distant ephemera beneath shocking pillars of scratchy sonic behemoths. In Randolph Peters’ Frisson, dramatic gestures struggle toward several climactic regions that are surrounded by tender lyricism. Dawn Avery’s Onekha’shòn:a,Yakón:kwe (The Waters, the Women) is a deeply moving three-movement work that speaks to the Indigenous understanding of the symbiotic and spiritual connections between women and water. Using the ecopoetry of Shannon Webb-Campbell throughout the piece as spoken word, Melissa Hui’s Ecology of Being produces a solitary barren enchantment – carefully designed thin and empty landscapes surround the spoken text like precious gems, creating warmth through scarcity. Lastly, Bekah Simms’ shedding, as if sloughed scatters darkness amid the burning vivid augmentation of sound and noise. This work is deeply expressive, producing rich manifolds of purging smoke and sunken ash. Simms’ innovative sonic images hover like shadowforms as if to suggest that everything comes from fire and returns to it. 

This release is a stunning collection of highly personal works wonderfully performed by the duo.

A Quinary – Canadian Concerti
Soloists; Vancouver Island Symphony; Pierre Simard
Redshift Records TK475 (redshiftrecords.org)

This Redshift release of five new concerti represents the culmination of a five-year commissioning project that paired five Canadian composers with principal players of the Vancouver Island Symphony. 

Jocelyn Morlock’s Ornithomancy, written for flute soloist Paolo Bortolussi, opens with sombre and mysterious interwoven sonorities below searching bright gestures in the solo flute part. The piece unfolds organically toward more excited materials where Bortolussi’s virtuosity soars with wonderful clarity of tone. 

The three movements of Dorothy Chang’s Invisible Distance take the listener through moods of lyrical melancholy, excited drama and deep enchantment. Chang’s highly imaginative orchestral scenes provide a brilliant tapestry over which cellist Ariel Barnes dazzles with soloistic fireworks. 

Edward Top’s Concerto for Bass Trombone and Orchestra is a shimmering fantasy embedded with rich bellows and sunken tones masterfully produced by soloist Scott MacInnes. Undulating repetitive spirals, delicate resonances and playful offerings comprise the three movements of Emily Doolittle’s Sapling where violin soloist Calvin Dyck handles the varied material with a welcomed expressiveness. 

Last on the disc is Stephen Chatman’s Concertino for Horn and String Orchestra. This work is joyous and full of life. The dance-like structures, and soloist Andrew Clark’s confident performance, create excitement and ever-forward momentum. With five successful new works and five brilliant soloist performances, this release is invigorating from start to finish. Five stars.