02 Marc Bourdeau CMCCD 32023Montréal Musica
Marc Bourdeau
Centrediscs CMCCD 32023 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

Like so many things in life, the inverted U-shaped curve best represents the ideal balance of exposure and mystery within a solo recording. Too much unveiling leaves nothing to the imagination in its fulsome exposition. Conversely, an unwillingness to unmask and musically disclose (the so-called “warts and all”), can come across as coy and not revelatory enough to strike a personal connection between artist and listener. But, when the forces align and an appropriate balance is struck, there is often magic contained within the performance that follows. Such is the case with Montréal Musica, a fine new recording by respected pianist, chamber musician and pedagogue Marc Bourdeau on Centrediscs, the record label of the Canadian Music Centre.

Spanning nearly a century of Canadian composition linked together not by style, genre or epoch, but rather uniformly tethered to the island of Montréal where Bourdeau calls home, this excellent 2023 release is notable for both its beautiful fidelity and acoustic capture of the instrument, as well Bourdeau’s bold decision to be stylistically agnostic and take on a mixed bag of intriguing repertoire whose only point of connection is the geographic origin of the composers. Although on the surface there may be little that unifies the music of Claude Champagne and Oscar Peterson, in the skilled hands of Bourdeau, the angles are found despite the stylistic discrepancies, and repertoire and artistry coalesce nicely to form a compelling and unified musical statement. Other composers represented include François Morel, André Mathieu, Jacques Hétu, John Rea, Denis Gougeon, Rachel Laurin and Marc-André Hamelin.

03 Colin EatockColin Eatock – Choral and Orchestral Music
Sinfonia Toronto; Soundstreams’ Choir 21
Centrediscs CMCCD31023 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

Following up on the Canadian Music Centre’s release of Colin Eatock: Chamber Music in 2012 (CMCCD 17812) this second volume features Eatock’s orchestral and choral works in performances by Sinfonia Toronto conducted by Nurhan Arman and the Soundstreams’ Choir 21 under the direction of David Fallis.

A baker’s dozen of Eatock’s choral works are on offer here. A number of them are based on sacred texts: The Lord Is Risen!, Three Psalms and Benedictus es: Alleluia are straightforward, major key settings in a largely syllabic and homophonic style, conventionally adorned with fleeting imitative passages, serene modulations and an abundance of sighing suspensions. Cast in a similar vein, the secular selections exhibit a somewhat darker tone and feature settings of texts by well-known authors Walt Whitman, Amy Lowell, Christina Rossetti and the exceedingly obscure 16th-century poet Francis Kindlemarsh. 

The extended opening track, a setting of Whitman’s Ashes of Soldiers, is an expansion of a work that also appeared in Eatock’s previous chamber music disc, heard here in a setting for string orchestra and harp with an extended instrumental introduction featuring a beautifully played introspective clarinet solo by Kornel Wolak followed by soprano Lynn Anoush Isnar’s sensitive interpretation of the text. Only the final selection of the disc is purely instrumental, a delightfully quirky Sinfonietta for chamber orchestra in three concise movements that are by turns bumptious, plangent and just plain silly, all tied together by a chromatic four-note garland seemingly based on transpositions of the B-A-C-H motive of yore (and perhaps the analogous D-S-C-H motive as well in light of the galloping Shostakovich-style rhythms of the finale!). 

All performances were expertly recorded at Toronto’s sonically legendary Humbercrest United Church by Robert DiVito. The clarity of diction is superb throughout.

04 Paul FrehnerPaul Frehner – Sometimes the Devil Plays Fate
Mary Beth Nelson; Dominic Desautels; Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra; Gemma New
Centrediscs CMCCD 31423 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

This release features a fine ensemble of musicians from the Hamilton Philharmonic under the superb leadership of Gemma New, with mezzo-soprano May Beth Nelson singing the title track. The chamber ensemble comprises string and woodwind quintets, plus trumpet, trombone, percussion, keyboards and harp. The undertaking was accomplished in the impossibly short timeframe of two days last September, a fact all the more astonishing given that New was rehearsing Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra during the same week.

Poems by Dane Swan provide text for Sometimes the Devil Plays Fate (which is a line from one of the two: Epitaph 8; Eclipse), along with an excerpt of a poem by Charles Mingus (also called Eclipse). Frehner shows a subtle appreciation for the themes expressed, repeating sections and giving them different musical treatments. The ensemble provides a commentary behind the incantation, sometimes syllabic, sometimes lyric. Nelson’s mezzo colour is perfectly suited to the dark material. Sometimes the balance is off, to the detriment of depth of sonic field. Recording this complex music under these time constraints might be to blame. Regardless, Frehner is a skilled orchestrator and knows exactly how to set players and voice in complementing strengths.  

Voluptuous Panic is the intriguing title of the work filling the final two tracks: Escape Velocity and Saltarello – Proxima Centauri; Frehner captures vertiginous sensation, often employing a “circus band” aesthetic. The middle cut is a piece I know and love: Cloak; Concerto for Clarinet and Ensemble (2016, revised 2022). Soloist Dominic Desautels gives a hyper-dramatic reading of the piece. The revisions work well, making me want another shot at it myself.*  

Editor’s note: Max Christie was the soloist in the premiere of Cloak with the New Music Concerts ensemble under Robert Aitken at Betty Oliphant Theatre in December, 2017.

05 Robert LemayRobert Lemay – Lignum et Spiritus
Stephen Tam; Anthony Thompson; Ron Cohen Mann; Kevin Harris; Yoko Hirota
Centrediscs CMCCT 12323 (cmccanada.org/shop/cmcct-12323/)

Composer Robert Lemay has, in a recording he calls Lignum et Spiritus, attempted to fuse four kinds of woodwinds instruments with the piano and enlisted pianist Yoko Hirota to facilitate this fusion with four instrumentalists. The performing artists include Stephen Tam (flute), Anthony Thompson (clarinet), Ron Cohen Mann (oboe) and Kevin Harris (bassoon) respectively for works titled Point d’équilibre, Shared Visions, Play Off and Au courde-à-courde.

Lemay’s intention to “fuse” two musical instruments suggests an attempt – albeit both scientific and intellectual – not so much to inextricably bind, but to allow the two fused entities to create something new. The attempt, he says is non-pedagogical. He means for the music to organically redirect the physical nature of each of the individual instruments – wood or Lignum – by exerting a spectral force, which suggests breathing a new spirit into the sonic nature of the instruments, hence the Spiritus in the title.

Each pair of instruments produces alternating timbres that magically create new organic-sounding variations. Lemay’s imaginative creations and Hirota’s inspirational pianism preside over duets which are mystical Schoenbergian odysseys that create new musical space transformed by vertical (pitch) and horizontal (rhythm and permutation) forces.

06 TransformationTransformation – Interactive works for piano
Megumi Masaki
Centrediscs CMCDVD 29322 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

Japanese-Canadian Megumi Masaki is an internationally renowned pianist, multimedia performing artist, educator and curator who was recently appointed Director of Music at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The DVD Transformation features her performing three interactive Canadian compositions for piano and new technology, each composed in collaboration with Masaki. A project documentary follows.

Orpheus (1) by T. Patrick Carrabré (composer, live electronics) and Margaret Atwood (poetry), for piano, toy piano, synthesizer and voice, challenges the Orpheus myth as a love story. Electronic sound washes open, then Masaki’s musically played simple lines and white snowflake-like specks on the blue backdrop. Faster accessible music, keyboard lines, spoken poetry, electronic rumbles/washes and backdrop scenes add excitement.

Piano Games by Keith Hamel (composer, software designer, live computer operator) for piano, hand tracking and live interactive video which responds to the piano sounds and hand positions, making each performance different. Backdrop lightning-like flashes and swirls match Masaki’s outfit colours. Hostile loud sounds and exploding lights to calming softer sounds and slower swirls to the pianist’s physical gestures, this is gaming chamber music!

Dōshite? どうして? by Bob Pritchard (composer, SHRUG designer, live computer operator) for piano, voice and movement honours the over 21,000 Japanese Canadians sent to internment camps in 1942 during WWII. Use of spoken text from Tsukiye Muriel Kitagawa’s book This is My Own (editor Roy Miki’s permission), a film featuring black and white photos from this time and piano music including Japanese song fragments “is offered as a form of apology”. 

Masaki and each composer talk about their musical and technological creative process and working together in the informative Transformation Documentary Film.

The music, visuals and hi-tech interactions on Transformation are indeed unforgettably transforming.

07 Ther Holy Gasp...and the Lord Hath Taken Away
The Holy Gasp
Independent  (theholygasp.bandcamp.com)

If, like me, you had neither heard of, nor listened to, The Holy Gasp before, the mere thought of approaching this album would be to expect something spiritually inclined. After all an ensemble called The Holy Gasp… well, what other kind of music would the ensemble make? Moreover, the album is titled … and the Lord Hath Taken Away, a direct quote from The Book of Job, of the Bible’s Old Testament spoken by the afflicted man himself at the height of his long suffering.

However, as it turns out, the ensemble’s frontman, Toronto-born poet, composer and vocalist of repute, Benjamin Hackman – knowledgeable as he as about scripture – is also a wonderfully free-thinking musician who can wield his impressive tenor voice and move easily between a kind of opera recitative, he’s-a-jolly-good-fellow klezmer, moaning blues-inflected vocals and any other style that his extraordinary music demands.  

Hackman’s multi-faceted skills and this shape-shifting music are eloquently articulated by the musicians in this large ensemble. And it is all held together as if in an enormous musical sculpture by the extraordinary Robert W. Stevenson who conducts it all. To experience a snapshot version simply skip from the darkening of The Merry Man of Uz to Who Framed Moishe Hackman? to the rollicking Everything Where It Should Be. But do that and you will be missing out on 15 other songs, each with its own evocative mystery and musical thrill. 

Listen to '...and the Lord Hath Taken Away' Now in the Listening Room

08 Nina PlatisaZa Klavir: For the Piano
Nina Platiša
Independent (ninaplatisa.com)

Elemental and concise – most under three minutes – the 27 pieces of Za Klavir: (For the Piano), composed between 2018 and 2022, are subtly spiced with piquant sprinkles of Balkan folk idioms. Engagingly varied in tempo, rhythm and mood, they share unadorned melodic lines and sparse accompaniments, often only simple pedal points.

Belgrade-born composer/pianist Nina Platiša, now based in Guelph, came to Canada as a three-year-old in 1994. Responding to my email query, she wrote, “When I was young, my mom taught my sister and me Balkan folk songs… As I began to compose the solo piano pieces that would eventually make up this album, the music to which I felt the closest connection was often the simplest, pieces with simple melodies and harmonies akin to those of Balkan folk music – unpretentious and transparent. They seemed to issue from me naturally.”

Save for the concluding Saputnik (Companion) No.1, the pieces are numbered, not named. In an interview posted online, Platiša described three of them, beginning with the solemn No.7. “I saw an image of it being played at the funeral of my grandfather or great uncle. I pictured my family and friends dancing to No.20 at my family’s slava (saint’s day) and I saw myself playing No.25 for a newborn baby.”

I was particularly enchanted by the delicate, melancholy beauties of Nos.5, 11, 14 and 19, reminiscent of Satie’s haunting Gymnopédies. I found Za Klavir compelling listening throughout; you may, too.

Listen to 'Za Klavir: For the Piano' Now in the Listening Room

09 Lebel Field StudiesEmilie Cecilia LeBel – field studies
Jane Berry; Cheryl Duvall; UltraViolet; Ilana Waniuk
Redshift Records TK530 (emilielebel.ca/discography)

Prolific Canadian composer Emilie LeBel has roots in the contemporary concert music scenes in Toronto and Edmonton. Recorded in both cities, field studies features five chamber works composed between 2016 and 2022.

It’s tempting to describe LeBel’s accomplished and mature compositional language as postminimalism. On closer listening however, it’s in turn austere, serene and sonically challenging, but also lush and lyrical. It embraces solitary long tones as well as complex harmonies and microtonal gestures. This complexity questions any neat “minimal” pigeonholing. 

Another sonic signature is LeBel’s ingenious use of coloured noise, exploiting the vast spectrum between conventional instrumental tone and white noise. In even if nothing but shapes and light reflected in the glass for alto flute, baritone sax and electronics, “tactile transducers on prepared snare and tom drums” supply the sonic grit. They provide a textural counterpoint to the two wind instruments’ built-in wind sounds as well as to their more typical lyrical voices.

Nor is LeBel afraid of boldly combining inherently contrasting instruments. For example, evaporation, blue is scored for the unlikely paring of piano and harmonica, both played with conviction and delicacy by Toronto pianist Cheryl Duvall.

LeBel’s considerable orchestration chops are aided by her close attention to the strengths and limitations of instruments and voices. Beautifully played by Ilana Waniuk, further migration for solo violin illustrates the former, while drift for voice and chamber ensemble animated by Jane Barry’s relaxed voice, the latter. I wouldn’t be surprised if an opera is in LeBel’s future.

10 Louise Campbell SourcesSources
Louise Campbell
Redshift Records (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/sources)

Ambient soundscapes can be fascinating. It’s a mystery to me that some can also be as listenable, out of context, as the material on this new disc. That’s a long-winded roundabout compliment to the creator of Sources, multi-disciplinary clarinetist Louise Campbell. Full disclosure: I too am a Campbell, of the Irish variety, so call me biased at an odd angle. 

The clarinet on these four tracks is rarely heard without many layers of electronic manipulation applied. Campbell’s playing is equal to the material she writes without ever being showy. The point is not to highlight the instrument nor the player, but to distill the sounds she generates into evocations. The first track, Songbird, is a psychedelic dawn chorus set in Georgian Bay. Swirl (an elegy to her late father) evokes tiny watery movements at the edge of Le Fleuve St. Laurent. Briefly, Campbell allows her sound to stand unclothed by electronic reverb and echo, a breathtaking moment. Playing Guitar Gear rocks on about Campbell’s hometown of Montreal. It’s the most dynamic piece, and while I don’t get what it’s about, it’s fun. 

 The first three tracks each last around ten minutes, and the fourth, People of the Sea, balances the length almost exactly at 33 minutes. Also a music therapist, Campbell allows one to wander about within the sounds. I found myself hearing it accompanying my thoughts on a range of things (including editing other reviews) and when I checked in it was mostly finished. At some point a single line became several, and a stationary colour became something like a melody. The texture is pebbled, not granular but bumpy, like distressed beach-glass. The final minute or so is an open harmony, a major sixth resolving gradually to an open fifth over an evocation of surf. Amen. Quite beautiful.

11 Christopher WhitleyDescribe Yourself
Christopher Whitley
Redshift Records TK529 (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/track/describe-yourself)

Six contemporary pieces for violin by living composers who also happen to be fellow Canadians make an interesting artistic choice. Add to that remarkable Canadian violinist Christopher Whitley performing on the 1700 “Taft” Stradivarius violin and we get an album that is beaming with adventure, potency, depth and ingenuity. Multi-talented Whitley interprets, collaborates, vocalizes, contorts, draws and carries the various extended violin techniques and melodies with the outmost conviction, all the while staying centred in the resonance and beauty of the pure sound. He is a sound magician with a deep understanding of composer’s intentions.

Some of these pieces are oriented toward exploration of the fundamental violin sounds, others more experimental. What they have in common is the array of open spaces left for existential sound. Kara-Lis Coverdale’s Patterns in High Places is successful in creating a continuum of musical pathways that are both soothing and probing. Nicole Lizée’s Don’t Throw Your Head In Your Hands is a pure joy to listen to; a beautiful cinematic canvas underneath violin solos is created through unconventional sound manipulations using old karaoke tapes. The album closes with In Bruniquel Cave by Fjóla Evans, its atmosphere so mysterious and dark that we might feel we entered a secret chamber to hear the time passing.

A violinistic and compositional chamber of curiosities, Describe Yourself makes its mark through a grand execution of imaginative writing.

12 Seth Parker WoodsDifficult Grace
Seth Parker Woods
Cedille CDR 90000 219 (cedillerecords.org)

The work contained in cellist Seth Parker Woods’ Difficult Grace almost defies classification. This is an album of live theatre, performance art, electronics, spoken word and poetry, political awareness, storytelling, ambient music and gorgeous cello playing. The overall cohesiveness contained is a theme of commitment to art, and if you were lucky enough to catch Woods’ March 2022 Toronto performance of this album you will be familiar with what a great work of art it is. 

The scope of the works contained is wide and deep. Beginning with Frederic Gifford’s 2019 Difficult Grace, one is immediately captured for the entirety of the album. Based on the poetry of Dudley Randall’s Primitives the verbal and musically sonic transformation is easily accessed. The delivery by Woods is a performance on its own. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s third movement Lamentations from his Black/Folk Song Suite reflecting the African-American experience is solo pizzicato throughout and aptly described in the title Calvary Ostinato. 

Monty Adkins1972 Winter Tendrils is a luscious melodic track, followed by Nathalie Joachim’s 1983 The Race 1915, one the album’s most powerful works. Inspired by visual artist Jacob Lawrence’s images of the historic African-American migration beginning in 1915, it features excerpts from issues of the important Black newspaper The Chicago Defender, published in that pivotal year citing the oppression and atrocities facing millions compelled to travel uncertain journeys. The spoken text and solo cello rise above the undercurrent of the train-like electronic ostinato, driving the piece to its powerful conclusion.  

Alvin Singleton’s 1970 work Arogoru (from the Twi language meaning “to play”) is a motivic, gestural piece followed by another of Joachim’s, Dam Mwen Yo. The final piece is Ted Hearn’s Freefucked (2022). A complex and yet straightforward suite of songs showcasing poems by Kemi Alabi, from their poetry collection Against Heaven, which really completes this fantastic journey with the use of electronics, vocal processing and solo cello. The suite is dynamic and full and could be listened to in parts or in whole. Each movement is stunning. It helps to follow the poetry included in the accompanying booklet but the music stands without it. This whole piece is awesome.

13 Lee WeisertRecesses
Lee Weisert
New Focus Recordings FCR366 (newfocusrecordings.com)

The album Recesses is a fantastical sonic journey of melting ice, acoustic piano, degraded tape and voices, a kind of hustle and bustle mixed with water droplets and electronic fuzz. Layers of time, stratus clouds shifting, streaks of water moving through air, frost on metal, children speaking. Colours of purple, grey and green. Sparkle and dust. Layer under layer under layer. Windows open and close, breezes blow through, curtains move. Empty walls fill up with images and empty out again. Conversations rise and fall. This album is a masterful creation, a demonstration of visually listening peripherally with a third eye, of noticing and letting go.

Never feeling preachy or heavy, these four beautiful tracks morph between mindful and wild, a flowing sonic movement that feels unrushed but is never still. This is a magical space to enter without the wastefulness of extraneous noise or volume. The fourth track, Similar Speeds, is a rather mesmerizing visualization of subtle stretching of mis-timing, reminiscent of the metal ball toy Newton’s Cradle.

Professor of composition at Northwestern University, DMA pianist and multi-instrumentalist Lee Weisert has collected a brilliant team of collaborators to build his journey with. Allen Anderson on modular synth,  Nicholas DiEugenio, violin, Jonathon Kirk, electronics and Melissa Martin, vocals. This is an album to listen to while doing nothing else.

Listen to 'Recesses' Now in the Listening Room

01 Kris DavisLive at the Village Vanguard
Kris Davis Diatom Ribbons
Pyroclastic Records PR 28/29 (krisdavis.net)

Émigré Canadian pianist/composer Kris Davis here commemorates a landmark appearance at New York’s Village Vanguard with this two-CD set by a quintet form of her group Diatom Ribbons, ranging through a program that includes both compositions by celebrated jazz composers and several of her own works that sometimes incorporate the voices of a few singular influences. Essentially heterodox, broad-based and witty, the music is anchored by drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and bassist Trevor Dunn, while Val Jeanty contributes turntables and electronics and Julian Lage, perhaps the leading jazz guitarist of the day, matches the blistering virtuosity and manic playfulness that Davis brings to piano, prepared piano and arturia microfreak synthesizer.  

The occasion is clearly one to celebrate and the performance is carnivalesque in mood and variety. The opening Alice in the Congo, composed by Ronald Shannon Jackson, has roots in both funk and free jazz, and Jeanty’s contribution adds hip-hop before Davis solos with wild keyboard splashes and runs. Other pieces from the contemporary repertoire include Geri Allen’s The Dancer and two distinct versions of Wayne Shorter’s Dolores.  

The bulk of the set consists of Davis’ own compositions, some acknowledging more influences, Nine Hats referencing works by Eric Dolphy and Conlon Nancarrow and the comically lumpy VW overlaying an archival radio interview with Sun Ra. Composers’ voices are even more prominent in the three-part, 34-minute Bird Suite. The Bird Call Blues segment references both bird song and Charlie Parker with the voices of Olivier Messiaen and Paul Bley, while Karlheinz Stockhausen discusses “intuitive music” on Parasitic Hunter

Somehow Davis manages to merge all of these diverse elements into a coherent and original whole – at once pulsing, comic and touching – that’s a brilliant representation of the range, freedom, energy and inclusivity that jazz can achieve.

02 BalladextrousBalladextrous
Sienna Dahlen; Bill Coon
Cellar Music CMR060322 (cellarlive.com)

Guitarists and vocalists share a unique bond when coexisting as a duo, and the exposure present without a rhythm section contrasts ominous vulnerability with ample space to thrive. Vocalist Sienna Dahlen and guitarist Bill Coon double down on this sparseness with Balladextrous, and make the most of this intimate, dreamy format. 

My favourite duo albums throughout history tend to playfully eschew traditional roles of melodic interpretation and harmonic accompaniment, and Balladextrous walks this line brilliantly. Coon’s chordal work and melodic content never leave listeners unsure of song forms or harmony, but he wisely avoids bludgeoning anyone with the kinds of dense accompaniment weaker guitarists may hide behind in this context. 

Dahlen has a playful sense of rhythm and phrasing that is both confident and interactive. This is a treat to hear applied to jazz standards, as it breathes new life into classic repertoire. Consciously or intuitively, the duo treats upbeat numbers like Happy Talk and I’m In The Mood for Love with a playful vibe, while sticking more to the bare-bones structures of pieces like Too Late Now and I Get Along Without You Very Well. Contrasting choices like these may not be predetermined, which is yet another testament to the intuition these two musicians possess.  

Give Balladexterous a listen through quality headphones with your eyes closed, then try it again tomorrow while ironing or meal-prepping. This album promises to elevate in all contexts!  

03 Let it ShineLet It Shine! Let It Shine!
Dee Daniels; Denzal Sinclaire
Cellar Music CM111621 (cellarlive.com)

Singers Denzal Sinclaire and Dee Daniels take us to church with their new offering, Let It Shine! Let It Shine! Produced by the renowned jazz bass player, John Clayton, and recorded over several days while the band and crew were living together in a house outside Calgary, the love that went into this project is palpable. With gospel being the predominant style, the Hammond B3 by organ master Bobby Floyd is a centrepiece of the album, but all the players have their moments, such as Herlin Riley’s tambourine flair on some of the spirituals and Nick Tateishi’s groovy guitar work on God, Be in My Head.

Sinclaire’s signature warmth and gently swinging style is a nice contrast to Daniels’ powerful vocals, yet they blend beautifully on their duets. I confess I wasn’t very familiar with Daniels’ work before listening to this album and what a force she is. Her intensity is perfect on the blues-tinged If He Changed My Name while her emotional range is showcased on Sometimes It Snows in April. Sinclaire does a wonderful lilting reimagining of Row, Row, Row Your Boat and a simply gorgeous take of Blessings Upon Blessings. But where the group really seems to hit its groove is on the traditional spirituals like This Little Light of Mine and Every Time I Feel the Spirit. When they let loose and the choir kicks in, I defy even the staunchest non-believers to sit still and not sing along.

04 Schwager OliverSenza Resa
The Schwager/Oliver Quintet
Cellar Music CMR030123 (cellarlive.com)

Much can be said about both guitarist Reg Schwager and saxophonist and flutist Ryan Oliver. Suffice it to say that both musicians have paid their dues in and around Canada and elsewhere with demanding bandleaders. In many respects their wide experience and well-documented discographies make them ideally suited to this ambitious project called Sensa Reza

On sterling repertoire Schwager and Oliver can be heard firing on all cylinders throughout the kinetic-energy-filled music on this album. The ensemble also features the liquid harmonics of pianist Nick Peck, and sizzle and rolling thunder with bassist Rene Worst and drummer Ernesto Cervini. Together, these musicians meld melodies, harmonies and rhythms into songs with a preternatural roar from one chart to the next, giving no quarter and taking no prisoners. 

No wonder that producer Luigi Porretta titled this album Senza Reza, Italian for “no surrender.” This powder-keg music explodes out of the gate with the incendiary Another Happening. There is no letup as the quintet negotiates the fast and oblique-angled rhythmic changes of Rushbrooke. This magnificently frenetic pace continues throughout, changing to elegiac only for Tender Love. The musicians on Senza Reza present an edge-of-the-seat experience from end to end, brilliant in both long-limbed soli and in ensemble.

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