Passion For Brass: Brassroots at 30
Brassroots; Bram Gregson
Independent CB-B-07 (brassroots.ca)

Although they are little known outside of their home community of London, Ontario, Brassroots is one of the finest brass ensembles in Canada. With this recording they are celebrating their 30th anniversary. In 1986 when the famous Philip Jones Brass Ensemble disbanded, Karl Hermann, a trombone student at the Western University, organized a brass ensemble with the same instrumentation of four trumpets, one horn, four trombones, one tuba and percussion. Over the years there have been changes in personnel, but the only significant change has been an enlargement of the percussion to enable performance of a more expansive repertoire. Under the direction of veteran conductor Bram Gregson, Brassroots can certainly be proud of this 30-year-celebration recording.

The CD opens with the Music for His Majesty’s Sackbuts and Cornetts by Matthew Locke (1621-1677), arranged for modern instruments. This is a stunning performance in its precision. It’s followed by works by Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli and Tylman Susato, a composer from Antwerp in the same period. Then, the recording moves on to Point Pelee by Howard Cable. One minute you are hearing Baroque and Renaissance music. Then you are ushered in to contemporary music from Billy May, Harold Arlen and George Gershwin. For a radical departure, with The Cat by Jimmy Smith, the ensemble is turned into a hard-driving big band complete with a Hammond B-3 organ.

The CD comes with excellent program notes which are not printed on the package but are on a separate brochure. Unfortunately, the listing of the selections does not indicate track numbers. To select and play a specific track it is necessary count down the listings to determine the track.

In all, this recording covers a great spectrum. My personal favourites are the Locke work and a stunning rendition of the famous Czardas of Vittorio Monti. The soloist, Michael Medeiros, proves that a tuba in the right hands can be a fine lyric solo instrument. Over all this is a first-rate CD covering music over three centuries.

Scriabin – Symphonies 1&2
London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; Valery Gergiev
LSO LSO0770

Those who love to classify composers into neat categories will certainly have a stumbling block with Scriabin. He is Russian, but doesn’t sound a bit Russian (more like Richard Strauss if anyone, yet the Slavic spirit is unmistakable); his music doesn’t follow any rules and for the casual listener it all sounds more or less the same. He has been bypassed and rarely performed at concerts, as conductors do not like to take chances, but I suspect very few of them are capable of interpreting it, as the music is completely free with no comprehensible structure. But with total engagement and absorption, repeated listening and a great conductor like Gergiev, this music will conquer and you’ll never tire of it.

Gergiev has already recorded the better-known symphonies, the Third and Fourth (Poem of Ecstasy), with the London Symphony, one of the best orchestras in the world, in state-of-the-art sound, and here we have the two earlier symphonies from his formative years. The five movement Symphony No.2 is already a mature work and so makes a deep impact while Symphony No.1 has a vocal ending fashionable in those days à la Liszt, Berlioz or Mahler, with fine soloists and chorus, but so poorly received by the public at its premiere (1900) that it was condemned to oblivion.

Gergiev however quickly convinces us to the contrary. Luckily I have seen him a few times and can just picture him conducting without a baton as he hypnotizes the orchestra by his razor sharp gaze and with his undulating body and they follow his every movement. He and the orchestra become one organic unit with an inner logic that this indeed exalted, passionate music demands. A wonderful new issue I’ve enjoyed tremendously.

Florent Schmitt – Antoine et Cléopâtre; Le Palais hanté
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra; JoAnn Falletta
Naxos 8.573521

Leonard Bernstein – Larger than Life
(A Film by Georg Wübbolt)
Cmajor 735908

The beauty of Wübbolt’s documentary is the decision not to show Leonard Bernstein’s life in chronological order but rather in random, visually pleasing segments which drive the storyline, regardless how much one knows about his life.

Footage of Bernstein conducting illustrates that he put everything – mind, body, listening and soul – into his work. The swaying, jumping and arm swinging are not affectations but the means to achieve a great orchestral performance. It wasn’t always easy for him, as seen in a clip of orchestra members chatting during his verbal direction of his beloved Mahler. Composing was a great love. Bernstein loved to work with the musical teams, as shown by driving footage from the timeless West Side Story and comments by Stephen Sondheim. Bernstein is seen leading conducting classes with enthralled participants while fun clips from his television show Omnibus and Young People’s concerts convey his passion for youth, storytelling, conducting and piano performance.

Interspersed is footage from Bernstein interviews. Illuminating comments feature his children, Jamie, Nina and Alexander, and professionals such as Sondheim, Kent Nagano, Marin Alsop and Gustavo Dudamel, who are positioned in front of eye-catching Bernstein photographic stills from private and professional settings. In dramatic visual contrast, a bonus section has Nagano, Alsop and Dudamel speaking minus the backdrop.

This film’s uncanny strength lies in its ability to create a personal viewing experience; one may feel that Leonard Bernstein is speaking and performing only to you.

Leo Zeitlin – Yiddish Songs, Chamber Music and Declamations
Rachel Calloway; Guenko Guechev; Daniella Rabbani; Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival
Toccata Classics TOCC 0294 (toccataclassics.com)

Joachim Stutschewsky – Chamber Music
Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival
Toccata Classics TOCC 0314 (toccataclassics.com)

The Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival (PJMF), in conjunction with Toccata Classics (an independent British label dedicated to producing recordings of first-rate yet overlooked classical music), has undertaken an ambitious and honourable project: releasing a series of CDs focussing on the largely forgotten and neglected music of members and composers affiliated with the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music. As PJMF founder and director (and the CDs’ producer), cellist Aron Zelkowicz, explains in a delightful radio interview he gave this past July on WQED’s Voice of the Arts – and as noted in the meticulously researched booklet accompanying each volume – the Society, which operated between 1908 and 1918, sought to elevate the music of the shtetl – klezmer, liturgical, cantorial, religious songs in Yiddish and Hebrew – to the highest level of Jewish art music, by creating scores, hosting symposiums, lectures and concerts, and most critically, publishing the works (about 80) of its affiliates.

Russian Jewish Classics, Volumes One and Two, are the PJMF’s first two commercial albums, and Zelkowicz promises a total of “at least” five in the series, to be released gradually over the next few years. Each album features the music of a single composer. Volume One offers a rich variety of works by Leo Zeitlin (1884-1930), a violinist, violist, conductor, arranger, impresario and teacher, who studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov. Volume Two explores the compelling chamber music of musicologist, arranger, pedagogue and cellist, Joachim Stutschewsky (1891-1982). The exhaustive notes in the aforementioned booklets provide a comprehensive biography of each composer.

With the limited space available, it’s not possible to do justice to the impressive breadth and depth of the music presented on each CD. Clearly, though, Zelkowicz’s assemblage of accomplished musicians (all members of esteemed orchestras and university music departments, who performed the music both live at the PJMF and in the studio recordings), executes this haunting, evocative, melodic, joyous, plaintive, gorgeous and freilach music with tremendous passion and intelligence. From Guenko Guechev and Daniella Rabbani’s dramatic recitations in Zeitlin’s unique “declamations” – affecting piano music underscoring spoken Yiddish and Russian poetry (once a popular genre) – and mezzo Rachel Calloway’s glorious interpretations of several of his Yiddish songs in various arrangements, to the masterful performances, by the musicians of the PJMF, of the rhapsodic and sophisticated chamber works of Stutschewsky, these CDs represent a wealth of material that demands renewed exploration and attention, attention it once commanded, briefly, in a bygone age.

I look forward to the rest of the series, and say “Bravo” and “Mazel Tov” to Zelkowicz, the PJMF and Toccata Classics.

Shostakovich – Under Stalin’s Shadow: Symphonies 5; 8; 9
Boston Symphony Orchestra; Andris Nelsons
Deutsche Grammophon 479 5201

Shostakovich – Piano Trios 1 & 2; Viola Sonata
Ashkenazy; Viontay; Lidstrom; Meinich
Decca 478 9382

The three chamber music works featured on this recording were written during three distinct stages in Shostakovich’s life (1923, 1943, 1975), showing the development of what was to become his unmistakably unique musical expression. Shostakovich wrote Piano Trio No.1 at the tender age of 17 and dedicated it to the girl he was in love with. Already in place are the typical Shostakovich elements that became more pronounced in the Piano Trio No.2 – singing melodies, textural use of string pizzicatos, percussive piano, chromatic scales and a hint of the grotesque. The second trio was dedicated to Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky, Shostakovich’s greatest friend who had died suddenly shortly before. The opening theme is ethereal, muted and lonesome. Nestled in between two lively, swaying and occasionally dense movements is Largo – a sorrowful ode, a yearning lament in the face of inevitability.

The Viola Sonata was written in the last few weeks of Shostakovich’s life. It is quite different from his previous works – sparse, with subdued yet powerful colours, 12-tone scales and musical quotations, most notably from Beethoven and Shostakovich himself, sombre throughout.

The intensity of Shostakovich’s music is matched by the captivatingly intense performances of these extraordinary musicians – Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano), Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay (violin), Mats Lidström (cello) and Ada Meinich (viola). Here we hear it all – the pain, turmoil, despondency, soaring, playfulness, raggedness, tenderness and radiance. These musicians bring out every colour, every nuance, every motif with astounding conviction and utmost respect for the great composer.

The Galilean Moons
Robert Dick; Ursel Schlicht
Nemu Records NEMU 017 (robertdick.net)

American extended flute master Robert Dick is renowned among contemporary flutists for his five-decade-long contribution to radically expanding the concert flute’s sounds, performance practice and repertoire. His work serves as a cornerstone of the flute avant-garde.

First published in 1975, his definitive reference work for flutists and composers The Other Flute: A Performance Manual of Contemporary Techniques remains in print and in demand. His contribution to flute hardware, the Glissando Headjoint®, was inspired by the electric guitar whammy bar. This telescopic flute mouthpiece designed by Dick allows downward glissandi from every note enabling the production of voice-like phrases and otherworldly sounds not heard before emanating from the flute.

Dick makes use of many of the extended flute techniques he’s catalogued, as well as his pitchbending headjoint, to evoke four contrasting extraterrestrial soundscapes in the album’s centrepiece The Galilean Moons. The four-movement suite co-composed by Dick and pianist Ursel Schlicht evokes, at times viscerally, the distinct physical environments found on each of Jupiter’s four moons.

The five other works on this album assay a tremendously wide sonic and emotional vocabulary ranging from Dark Matter, in which Dick recites texts used by Internet spammers through the unusual contrabass flute, to Dick’s multi-movement work Life Concert. The latter explores European atonalism, in places haunted by the ghost of the blues, but also enriched by explicit references to African and Indian music. The piano’s strings emulate the sound of the kalimba at one point, while the primary theme of the final movement echoes aspects of the Hindustani raga Multani.

Expect a surprising and ear-opening journey from this veteran intergalactic flute traveler.

De souffles et de machines
Quasar quatuor de saxophones
Quatuor Bozzini CQB 1618 (actuellecd.com)

The first striking thing about this new record from Quasar, Canada’s premier saxophone quartet, is its minimalist packaging. The sleeve and booklet are black and white. The notes probably fill one letter-size page all-told, and they read like a pastiche of found text. Montreal-born composer Pierre Alexandre Tremblay presents an Aloysius Bertrand-inspired poem in lieu of notes; Wolf Edwards offers a wikipedia-esque blurb about predator drones. But for music that means to speak beyond the bounds of words, there can be no better introduction. Like a rare, hand-painted cassette hiding at the bottom of a bin otherwise filled with greatest-hits compilations and obsolete business audio books, these electroacoustic soundscapes wait patiently to be heard.

That spirit pervades every work on this disc, but none more so than Tremblay’s Les pâleurs de la lune. Here, electronic clicks flitter against a nocturnal saxophone backdrop. This electronic scaffolding, which also takes the form of saxophone long tones distilled into pulsewaves, is omnipresent but unobtrusive. Like circuit traces on a motherboard, these elements lay flush against Les pâleurs, where they serve a mysterious yet important function.

Listening to De souffles et de machines feels like being the only person awake on an overnight bus winding its way through a dark forest: it’s as though the night, unaware of your presence, has let its hair down. Only here, as the saxophone squalls mount, the night seems perilously close, at times, to rearing its head.

Israfel – Music for flute and electronics
Paolo Bortolussi; Keith Hamel; John Oliver
Redshift Records TK443 (redshiftmusic.org)

Israfel is Canadian flutist Paolo Bartolussi’s first solo recording, and it shows. That’s not because it’s bad, however, rather it shows because Bartolussi’s enthusiasm over the freedom offered by a solo recording seems to border on giddiness. Here he has packed everything in: Israfel is simultaneously an homage to the teachers who introduced him to his passion for electroacoustic music, a catalogue of the pieces he played on the way to becoming a virtuosic electroacoustic performer and a miniature history of interactive electronic music technique.

The narrative of Bartolussi’s development as a musician presented here is certainly resonant: Bartolussi first heard Larry Lake’s Israfel while standing outside his professor’s studio before a lesson with his ear to the door. Somehow, Israfel just sounds like one of those pieces which leaves a young musician in awe of his or her teacher: the pyrotechnical virtuosity, the novelty of the tape accompaniment.

But ultimately the most compelling aspect of this disc is the way it showcases the various degrees of interactivity between a performer and electronic accompaniment. At one end of the spectrum is the aforementioned Israfel, with its unflinching pre-recorded tape accompaniment. Then there’s Kaija Saariaho’s NoaNoa, with its pedal-activated electronics. On the bleeding edge is Keith Hamel’s Krishna’s Flute; here, the computer actually listens to what the performer is doing and responds with electronic events. Throughout, it’s Bortolussi’s consummate virtuosity which allows the listener to trace the nuances of these various techniques.

Linda Catlin Smith – Dirt Road
Mira Benjamin; Simon Limbrick
Another Timbre at97 (anothertimbre.com)

Bryn Harrison – Receiving the Approaching Memory
Aisha Orazbayeva; Mark Knoop
Another Timbre at96

Illogical Harmonies – Volume
Johnny Chang; Mike Majkowski
Another Timbre at98

ffansïon/fancies
Angharad Davies; Tisha Mukarji
Another Timbre at99

When it comes to modern music, there is an audience that often wonders: “Where’s the melody?” A lazy ear often fails to discern it but it is there. Chances are that the audience was looking elsewhere. Today’s composer also holds the three traditionally held principal constituents of music together in his or her unique style, which, if one listened with an open ear, would reveal a world of wonderfully coherent sound. Linda Catlin Smith’s celebrated new release, Dirt Road, is one such piece of music in which melody, harmony and the rhythm of the earth, together with passion and precision, coalesce and balance ideally.

What magic and mystery she achieves in a work full of knowingness, warmth and beauty, violinist Mira Benjamin and percussionist Simon Limbrick always seem to find a direct and unimpeded path to this musical truth and eloquence. You will not hear a more fervent and inspired interpretation of this suite of 15 miniatures, played with mastery of ever-changing colour, light and shade. Every nuanced aural entity is given time to breathe and speak, to weep, sing and sigh just as Smith envisioned in her work. Immaculate virtuosity is always pressed into service, but never at the expense of emotion and passion. The endlessly mercurial and fascinating pieces reveal the composer’s patrician eloquence and refinement. And you never have to strain to hear the melody; Smith doesn’t even try to hide it under a bushel along this proverbial road less travelled.

The purity of sound with which this performance has been captured has been repeated in all four Another Timbre recordings. But more than anything else it is the beguiling melodies and other sonic surprises that inform these releases from this iconic new British label that specialises in modern music. The four recordings in question are Illogical Harmonies’ Volume with Johnny Chang (violin) and Mike Majkowski (double bass), Receiving the Approaching Memory by Bryn Harrison featuring Aisha Orazbayeva (violin) and Mark Knoop (piano) and ffansïon/fancies performed by Angharad Davies (violin) and Tisha Mukarji (piano).One cannot go wrong with any of these releases.

Aldo Clementi – Momento
Quatuor Bozzini
Quatuor Bozzini CQB 1615 (actuellecd.com)

Full Moon in the City
George Sakakeeny, bassoon; various Oberlin ensembles
Oberlin Music OC 15-05 (oberlin.edu/oberlinmusic)

George Sakakeeny is a professor of bassoon at the Oberlin Conservatory and a virtuoso soloist with significant works commissioned for him, including the Larsen and Schickele pieces on this disc. His tone is full and well-rounded, with excellent intonation and a secure upper register, and he receives able support from Oberlin ensembles conducted by Timothy Weiss and Raphael Jiménez. Of the disc’s four well-crafted pieces, all by established American composers, I found the Bassoon Concertino (2014) by Augusta Read Thomas (b.1964) especially clear and coherent in tonal language. It is based on three modernist paintings; the melding of tones and tone clusters in Part 2: Wassily Kandinsky: Sky Blue is particularly appealing. Russell Platt (b.1965) brings out the instrument’s lyrical qualities well in Concerto for Bassoon and Strings (2008), but I think errs toward nostalgia sometimes. Attractive bassoon lyricism also permeates the intriguing Full Moon in the City by Libby Larson (b.1950), which evokes an urban pre-dawn stroll. Bits of popular songs about the moon appear in different guises, and the lush string writing gives a nod to noir style. (I associate this also with old late-night TV movies!)

The nature of Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra (1998) by Peter Schickele (b.1935) is indicated by the work’s movement titles: Blues, Intermezzo, Scherzo, Song, and Romp. This engaging work demonstrates the composer’s legendary wit and timing, along with deft orchestration and musical imagination to spare.

Spirits of Havana: 25th Anniversary 2-Disc Edition
Jane Bunnett
Linus (linusentertainment.ca)

This 25th anniversary re-release consists of Spirits of Havana, Jane Bunnett’s landmark album – preceding by six years the first Buena Vista Social Club CD – the follow-up album Chamalongo, plus three previously unreleased tracks. The package is enriched by a 36-page booklet stocked with period photos, plus notes by musicologist Robert Palmer and Cuban music researcher Ned Sublette.

Toronto jazz flutist, saxophonist and bandleader Bunnett’s multifaceted exploration of jazz and Afro–Cuban music has earned her numerous accolades over her career. They include multiple Downbeat awards and five JUNO Awards, the Order of Canada and two GRAMMY Award nominations, among many other honours.

In Spirits of Havana, Bunnett brings her considerable jazz flute and soprano chops to the studio, joined by top Cuban musicians including pianists Hilario Duran, Frank Emilio Flynn and Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Infusing the proceedings with particular Afro-Cuban mojo is the late singer Merceditas Valdés (1922-1996) who was key in popularising Afro-Cuban music throughout Latin America. All the tracks are supported by a killer rhythm section, serving to drive each track inexorably onward. We hear jazz layered onto Afro-Cuban songs and rhythms along with traditional Cuban tunes like Yemaya. The album is anchored by a loose-limbed, densely percussion-driven, rendition of Thelonious Monk’s Epistrophy with strong soprano sax solos by Bunnett.

Chamalongo (1998) also features Bunnett, pianists Hilario Duran, Frank Emilio Flynn, Toronto trumpeter Larry Cramer, their rhythm section, in addition to the ten-member Cuban Folkloric All-Stars. The repertoire here features traditional Cuban songs, enhanced by two Bunnett compositions, Freedom at Last which is underpinned by advanced jazz harmonies, and Piccolo Dance which indeed showcases a sprightly solo by the composer framed by the Cuban Folkloric All-Stars male singers.

The release of Spirits of Havana in 1991 proved to be a significant musical event, introducing many listeners to the vigour and beauty of Afro-Cuban music and the keen talent of Jane Bunnett. Listening to it again today reveals a palpable collaborative excitement, the result of the confluence of wisely chosen repertoire and incisively brilliant performances from its Canadian and Cuban musicians. The spirit and music on these albums remain un-dulled by the passage of time.

Soweto Stomp
Malcolm Goldstein; The Ratchet Orchestra
Mode Records 291 (moderecords.com)

Longtime Montreal resident, violinist Malcolm Goldstein, 79, has since the early 1960s negotiated the fissure between improvisation and composition from the so-called classical side of music. Now that the rest of the world has caught up with him, this fine session demonstrates how his ideas can be amplified by his adopted city’s 15-piece Ratchet Orchestra. Like the field commander who leads by example, the violinist is as much part of the fray as his much younger associates. Track one for instance Configurations in Darkness is a matchless instance of his knotty, string-jumping solo skill that’s still sonorous enough to suggest a dulcet folksy air.

More indicative of the collaboration are tracks such as In Search of Tone Roads No.2, from 2013 which is a reimaging of a lost Charles Ives composition; and the title tune written in 1985 to celebrate both the Soweto uprising against Apartheid and Martin Luther King’s achievements. Formalist without being formalistic, the first is no more an Ives copy than a photo of a smiling woman is the Mona Lisa. Instead, the cantilever arrangement mixes brass smears, peeping reeds and trombone counterpoint so that the tune evolves with its own narrative, mostly via Guillaume Dostaler’s piano chording, while also suggesting earlier pastoral themes. Meantime Goldstein plus two additional violinists and one violist scratch out cunning string splays that provide a circumscribed framework for the performance as it builds to a polyphonic crescendo. Invested with kwela rhythms, Nicolas Caloia’s double bass bounce as well as a shuffle beat from percussionists Isaiah Ceccarelli and Ken Doolittle, Soweto Stomp recalls Maiden Voyage as much as Nelson Mandela, with five reedists bringing in jazz inflections to mix with near-hoedown fiddle lines that together leap to a triumphant peppery and peppy conclusion. Ahead of his time for many years, it appears Goldstein has hooked up with the perfect ensemble to aid in his musical interpretations.