Prokofiev – Piano Sonatas Vol.III
David Jalbert
ATMA ACD2 2463 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/prokofiev-piano-sonatas-vol-iii)

David Jalbert has for years now been numbered amongst Canada’s very best pianists. He has been recording sensitive renditions of Russian repertoire, and here he is in the third and final instalment of the Complete Piano Sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev which stand as a pinnacle amongst mid-20th century piano composition. They are not often assayed because of their stringent technical demands, especially these last few, written in close collaboration with Sviatoslav Richter. Richter premiered most of Prokofiev’s later sonatas, and this is rarefied territory which Jalbert masters with aplomb.

These pieces are not only intense, they have to be displayed in a relaxed way no matter the storm of notes creating the aesthetic tension. The thrilling climaxes in the Eighth Sonata never threaten to become clotted, with absolutely clear articulation through the tangled but never muddy Iines. The dynamics can become suddenly thunderous, or fall into transparent mid-distance textures, the volume wells up in a complex of contrapuntal lines, but there is never any banging on chords. Amazing stuff, and Jalbert really brings out the Prokofievian earmarks. 

There is a bit of chord banging in the makeweight Sarcasms from 1911 however, when  Prokofiev was still working on being a musical “Bad boy.” 

This is all borne by the absolutely exemplary capture of the piano sound, which is the best imaginable, placed in a resonant but not too roomy acoustic in the Isabel Bader Center in Kingston. The piano is not named. 

This is urgently recommended, and I will now seek out the first two volumes of this series, which augur to be the best integral set of some of Prokofiev’s greatest music.

Poema 2. Terra Nova
Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra; Alexander Shelley
Analekta AN 2 8892 (nac-cna.ca/en/orchestra/recordings/poema-2)

This is the second issue from Analekta of an ambitious series of recordings that feature works of Richard Strauss, juxtaposed with newly commissioned concert items by young composers. It may be the first Canadian attempt to present a series of Strauss Tone Poems with a single orchestra, in this case the National Arts Center Orchestra conducted by their resident maestro Alexander Shelley. The commissioned Canadian composers are invited to reflect, critique, embrace, reject or deconstruct Strauss’ language at will.

This series has been titled Poema, and this is Poema2, further mysteriously subtitled Terra Nova. In much smaller print we discover the listing of Ian Cusson’s 1Q84 Sinfonia Metamoderna, paired with the ubiquitous Also Sprach Zarathustra. The Cusson piece does not seek to de-construct or criticize Strauss, but manages to extend his orchestral practices into an impressive style, using an extended instrumentation, but differing from Strauss’ orchestra. 

The orchestral lists show that the National Art Center Orchestra has been much extended with guest artists to provide the required massive forces. The venue, Southam Hall, is roomy, but not reverberant, and there is a good sense of space. An organ [digital] has been brought in, but it is merely adequate in that big open space. Shelley’s performance is a well paced 34 minutes long, and it has a great sense of coherence and flow. The strings  have enough impact but are recorded a bit diffusely.

On repeated listening the Cusson piece is for me by far the more interesting piece on this disc. Cusson, of French speaking Métis extraction, has produced a brilliant orchestral movement of some depth and complexity. At only ten minutes, it could have been much longer, but this is a commissioned piece, which usually comes with a time limitation (R. Murray Schafer’s No Longer Than Ten Minutes, a TSO commission based on Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben comes to mind). With a capacity of another 30 minutes of music on this disc, it is a pity that the commission should not have been for a longer piece from this evidently able composer. As it is, the new piece could seem like an afterthought, except that it is sure to grow on anyone who listens to it a few times.

Nebulæ
Valerie Milot
2xHD 2XHDVM1286 (valeriemilot.com/audio)

Quebecoise harpist Valérie Milot has performed on over 100 recordings. She appears both as a soloist and in ensemble settings with such orchestras as Les Violons du Roy and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. In 2008 she became the first harpist in nearly a century to win Prix d’Europe. 

Milot’s latest release, Nebulæ, features an intriguing cross section of solo harp music. Her album liner notes state that it is the audio portion of a dual project, in conjunction with a live performance tour which includes projections and  “exposes scientific and philosophical themes through the science of astral phenomena.” She encourages her listeners to reflect and meditate on their place in the universe.

 New works by Denis Gougeon and Amelie Fortin are featured, along with works by Debussy, Gluck, Liszt, etc. Harpist Carlos Salzedo’s composition Jeux d’eau, Op.29 has sudden descending glissandos, vibratos, lower and higher pitched sounds, repeated notes and a melody section adding colourful “watery” interest. The closing soft section with single detached notes is so enticing. 

Milot’s colleague Amélie Fortin composed Lux, a solemn piece with atonal sounds at times. An unexpected sudden silent space leads to more classic harp sounds like diverse pitches, high notes and melodies leading to a sudden ending. Milot’s arrangement of William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost Rag has a more rock/jazz feel with accented melody, low notes and grooves. A full band sound is created by her virtuosic playing.

Regardless of whether you do or don’t meditate, Milot’s colourful harp playing here in 14 solo tracks is amazing musical listening.

Linda Catlin Smith – The Complete Piano Solos (1989-2023) Volume One: The Plains
Cheryl Duvall
Redshift Records TK565 (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/linda-catlin-smith-the-complete-piano-solos-1989-2023-vol-1-the-plains)

Most music is best appreciated and understood when listened to intently and without distraction. Opportunities for such immersive and focussed listening experiences are, however, increasingly rare in our complicated and busy lives. The Plains, a single hour-long piece for solo piano composed by the American-born Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith, comprises this entire 2025 album of the same name, is such a composition that not only benefits from such intense listening but demands it from its audience.  

Released on Redshift Records and performed here with aplomb by the Toronto-based pianist Cheryl Duvall, The Plains unfurls over some 65 exquisite minutes, drawing listener attention to the probing nature and soft intensity of this unique piece. Duvall, who has commissioned a series of hour-long compositions from Smith and other Canadian composers, clearly has the training and well-honed skill of interpreting fine contemporary music, as well as the ability to move freely across style and discipline that is needed to tackle an ambitious project such as this. 

Punctuating a relationship that began in the early 2000s when Smith was Duvall’s professor for a contemporary composition course at Wilfrid Laurier University, the process of recording The Plains inspired the pianist to take on Smith’s complete piano catalogue. As such, Vol 1. The Plains, which is available for purchase on Bandcamp, marks the initial foray, with three subsequent volumes forthcoming. Be on the lookout for those and enjoy. 

Re/String
Adam Cicchillitti; Steve Cowan; Collectif9
Leaf Music LM298 (leaf-music.ca/music/lm298)

Whoever said that nothing good ever comes from conferences clearly has not heard the music on Re/String. The CC Duo, composed of Canadian guitarists Adam Cicchillitti and Steve Cowan, joined forces in 2019 at the 21st Century Guitar Conference in Ottawa with the goal of exploring the bleeding edge of classical guitar in both performance and on record. And that they do.

 Here, on this 2025 release from Nova Scotia’s Leaf Music, the duo is joined by Montreal’s collectif9, a nine-piece string ensemble under the artistic direction of Thibault Bertin-Maghit, to creatively mine a fresh program of new musical work by a largely Canadian collection of exciting composers that includes Amy Brandon, Kelly-Marie Murphy, Patrick Roux, Bekah Simms and Harry Stafylakis. The music is both beautiful and engaging but also dark, creative, and exploratory, challenging Cicchillitti and Cowan to stretch the limits of their already considerable technique with virtuosic finger-style passages, percussive playing, alternate instrumental tunings, and cross-genre stylistic leaps that traverse the worlds of classical, rock, and even heavy metal. 

 A highly fêted group who has already been recognized with multiple awards at the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America’s International Ensemble Competition, Re/String will undoubtedly mark another creative and commercial success for this impressive duo who are committed to touring and keeping alive this vibrant collection of exciting new string music.

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Found Objects | Sound Objects
Marc-André Hamelin
Hyperion Records CDA68457 (hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68457)

I should disclose that I have been a follower of this artist for several decades, even before he came full time to Hyperion. Marc-André Hamelin has followed a process of constant refinement of his unique set of assets and musical strengths. He has a recent disc of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata, and now we have a collection of thorny, magnificent items that hover beyond traditional harmony, and explore challenging new forms of pianistic expression. 

This new disc has perhaps one of the most impressive programs in recent years, and it seems to extend the challenging tone of his recent album of his own compositions, with seven pieces by six composers, many of whom are not generally familiar, plus one new item by Hamelin himself.

Frank Zappa starts the program with Ruth is Sleeping which is quite atonal and sets the tone of a searching modernism found in most of these pieces. Salvatore Martriano’s Stuck on Stella is full of pianistic surprises, but the third item Tip by John Oswald from 2021 is waywardly tonal, and it lapses into sudden snippets of hackneyed piano repertoire by composers such as Chopin and Ravel, that are woven into the texture but only as wisps of quotes that suddenly appear and dissolve without any development. This can be heard as a crossover piece, but there may be irony in the bluntness of the quotes.

In the middle place we get a John Cage piece for prepared piano, The Perilous Night, from 1944, which reduces and restricts the enormous pianistic potential to the scale of a tiny percussion ensemble, sometimes evoking a Gamelan, in simplistic rhythmic music that conjures primitive folk elements. The pianist plays percussively and is given many little rhythmic twists and changes, and there are no tunes or harmonies. 

For me the major interest is Stefan Volpe’s hyper-complex tour-de-force Passacaglia, from 1936, revised in 1971, which seems to cram in every possible compositional device which Hamelin manages with perfect expressive poise in spite of the torrent of notes. Another 14-minute complex musical organism is the Refrain by Jehudi Winer, a friend of Hamelin’s, which has a sense of very personal commitment. This piece from 2012, is one of my favourites with moments of a kind of lyricism.

The final Witches Sabbath, Hamelin’s own Hexxensabbath, seems an absolute release of fury, and frenzied dancing, and is almost a stunt in its complete abandon at banging at the piano the way I never thought possible from this always poised artist.  

The piano sound is, as usual with Hamelin, sumptuous and rich. I urge this collection for anyone who is ready for a bracing wake-up, since the program can have an eruptive effect on one’s disposition.

Songs for Glass Island
Experimental Music Unit and Camille Norment
Redshift Records TK569 (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-glass-island)

Songs for Glass Island unfolds as a continuous 50-minute soundscape divided into ten songs although the work behaves like a single evolving organism in two parts. Its conceptual spark comes from Robert Smithson’s unrealized 1969 land-art proposal to encrust Miami Islet in the Salish Sea with 100 tons of tinted glass, a project eventually abandoned due to public opposition. Rather than illustrating the idea, the artists imagine the acoustic life of such a place: the resonances and spectral ecologies that might arise from a glass-covered island.

Created by Camille Norment with Experimental Music Unit members Tina Pearson, George Tzanetakis and Paul Walde, the album immerses the listener in the raw, elemental acoustics of glass—shattered, bowed, blown, rubbed and coaxed into states that feel both organic and otherworldly.

Part I opens with a burst of shattering textures that gradually dissolve into long, breath-infused tones. Low, whale-like undulations emerge for an extended sequence, with higher gestures appearing as counterpoint. The soundscape then shifts into bell-like and whistling tones in close harmonic clusters before giving way to rougher grating timbres. Part II enters in stark contrast, with spacious, resonant bell-like tones. Gradually, short articulations gather in layers over a low-register drone, bringing this glass-born world to a close.    

Throughout, the absence of electronic processing heightens the music’s intensity. Songs for Glass Island is a rare achievement, an acoustic world of glass rendered with breathtaking imagination and precision.

From Grimsby to Milan
Gayle Young; Robert Wheeler
Farpoint Recordings fp104 (farpoint.bandcamp.com/album/from-grimbsy-to-milan)

From Grimsby to Milan is six avant-garde experimental, eclectic, at times loud/stormy, instrumental improvisations. Canadian composer, multi-instrumentalist, author and instrument designer Gayle Young (Grimsby, ON) plays her invention, the acoustic Amaranth, a microtonal zither that features 21 steel strings and 3 double-bass strings using a mix of guitar tuning pegs and triangular wooden bridges for tuning. American Robert Wheeler (Milan, OH), former Pere Ubu band synthesist, plays the electronic 1960s analogue synthesizer EML Electrocomp 101. Young and Wheeler first collaborated in a 2008 Toronto performance. This release was recorded in spring 2024 at Hamilton’s Grant Avenue Studios.

It may be difficult for some to enjoy this music but give it a try! Seaweed Slowly Shifting starts with single held notes, ripples, and high notes, then Young playing softer with pizzicato. More electronic louder held “in tune,” sometimes wobbling, notes move above string plucks and quasi melodies. Electronic drum-like banging leads to a relaxed decrescendo ending. Iceberg Star Chart starts subtly with lower held electronic notes below Young’s strums. A short silence is followed by high held notes and bangs; string strums with electronic backdrop of high notes and “watery” effect. Clear separate blending lines each match changing louder volumes making for accessible listening. Then a gradual more atonal low pitched zither solo melody. Ripple effect enters with an ascending line, electronic interjections and a sudden ending.  

These improvised duets vary from unified and close to contrasting, distant, detached tonal/atonal lines. Wheeler’s intriguing synthesizer percussion, howls, birdy chirps and sound bursts, and Young’s colourful sounds are majestic, breathtaking, attention-grabbing and smart!

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György Kurtág – Játékok
Brigitte Poulin
Leaf Music LM 302 (leaf.music/music/lm302)

Now 99 years old, György Kurtág has been writing tiny pieces for piano since 1973, gradually accumulating these miniatures into ten volumes of Játékok (“Games”). They are gaining increasing attention from major pianists, with excerpts recorded by Leif Ove Andsnes (2009) and Vikingur Ólafsson (2022). This year has now seen two releases dedicated exclusively to selections of these works: a two-disc set from Pierre-Laurent Aimard appeared in April, and October saw the release of a single-disc survey from Montreal-based Brigitte Poulin.

The 50 pieces on Poulin’s album range in length from 21 seconds to a little under three minutes, and include several world-premiere recordings. In these “Games,” Kurtág was inspired to explore sounds on the piano just as occurs with “children playing spontaneously, children for whom the piano still means a toy. They experiment with it, caress it, attack it and run their fingers over it.” Poulin is attuned to the intensity and variety Kurtág brings to these pieces, creating whole moods in just seconds of music. They range from playful to gentle, mournful to energetic, capable of communicating deep emotion in only a few moments and often in only a few notes.

Poulin’s range of sound is wide, from the most delicate pianissimi to resonant chordal clusters, fully attuned to Kurtág’s immense sound palette. She is attentive to Kurtág’s instructions when the music is notated precisely, but also creative when the composer provides only an approximate graphic notation. Listen to the sparkle of Thistles, the contrasts in Scherzo, and the quiet intensity of Quiet Talk with the Devil to get an idea of Poulin’s range and naturalness in this music. 

Whether sampled a few at a time, or taken together as a 70-minute suite, this recital is an impressive achievement that should be heard by all admirers of contemporary piano music.

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The Han & Heung Odyssey – Global Sounds of Resilience & Joy
Cecilia Kang; Angela Park
Albany Records TROY 2005 (albanyrecords.com/catalog/troy2005)

Korean-Canadian clarinetist Celia Kang commissioned seven of these ten short pieces to express musically two essences of Korean culture – han (suffering) and heung (joy); Canadian pianist Angela Park contributes in seven selections.

The WenYun Ensemble – vocalist Yeowan Choi and live-electronics performer Haeyun Kim – joins Kang in two pieces by Kim. Arirang Madrigal and Poetree share yearning vocalises and dreamy sensuality. Marc Mellits’ Andromeda portrays his grandparents’ migration from Eastern Europe to the U.S. with jaunty clarinet tunes over repeated electronic figurations. Kang’s clarinet turns jazzy in SiHyun Uhm’s Echoes of Hahoe: A Masked Reverie for clarinet, piano and electronics, based on Korean ritual dances.

The slow, ruminating Peace reflects Jessie Montgomery “making peace with sadness as it comes and goes.” Texu Kim’s Sweet, Savory and Spicy!! depicts a Korean chili paste with lively syncopations and discordant wails. Fragmented clarinet melodies over pulsating piano ripples evoke “boat song traditions, and how they resonate with people facing exile” in Kalaisan Kalaichelvan’s Do the waters stutter?

Eleanor Alberga’s Duo features abrupt clarinet phrases and pounding piano chords “internalizing han (a deep unresolved sorrow).” Kevin Lau’s Cradle embraces both han and heung in a disturbed lullaby, “honouring my mother’s resilience” (after childhood internment in India) “and the pain that must have accompanied the joy of raising her own family.” Sang Jin Kim’s gentle, bluesy Ballade ends the disc with “the quiet ache of han and the uplift of heung, where sorrow and joy intertwine.”

Four Generations
Patrick Moore; Andrew Staupe
Navona Records nv6766 (navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6766)

Like the biblical series of “begat”s, these four works for cello and piano are linked by sequential relationships, in this case, those between teachers and students: Darius Milhaud taught William Bolcom, who taught Arthur Gottschalk, who taught Karl Blench.

Lasting only a little over four minutes, Milhaud’s Elégie (1945) is no lamentation; instead, it’s sweetly nostalgic, the cello’s long-lined lyricism shifting gently between major and minor modalities. Pulitzer-laureate Bolcom’s 18-minute Cello Sonata No.1 (1989) mixes, he writes, “traditional, popular and modernist musical languages…to form a serious piece of music with a serious sense of humor.” The always-eclectic Bolcom channeled Broadway blues (Allegro inquieto), Brahms (the lovely, sentimental Adagio semplice) and Bartók (the motorized Allegro assai) in this always-entertaining pastiche.

Gottschalk’s 23-minute Cello Sonata: In Memoriam (2006) presents, says Gottschalk, three “personality sketches” of “men who meant so much to me personally.” The first is alternatingly enigmatic and rambunctious, the second intensely melancholy, the third aggressively assertive. It’s a work with its own intriguing, multifaceted “personality.”

The seven movements of Blench’s gripping 26-minute Dreams and Hallucinations (2014, rev.2022) depict, writes Blench, the delusions of “The Man…a tragic character, trapped in his own mind.” Ominous, tolling chords, anguished wails, obsessive rhythms and nightmarish dissonances effectively create a disturbing sonic mirror of “The Man’s” disturbed mind.

Cellist Patrick Moore and pianist Andrew Staupe, both Texas-based, bring passion and depth to these very different, yet very engrossing compositions.

NÁND – Works for Solo Cello
Sigurgeir Agnarsson
Crescendo CRESC001 (crescendo.is/nand)

I can’t think of a more descriptive title for this debut solo album by cellist Sigurgeir Agnarsson than Nánd – meaning “Intimacy” in Icelandic – and the beauty and serenity of the works are drawn out by the purity and nearly effortless playing of this principal cellist of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Of the five solo cello works included, all but one – Hallgrimsson’s 1969 Solitaire I – are world premiere recordings by two of Iceland’s premier composers; works by cellist/composer Hafliði Hallgrímsson and his nephew Hugi Guðmundsson.

Beginning with Guðmundsson’s Coniunctio (translating from Latin to “Presence/Intimacy”) the most recent work on the album was composed for and dedicated to Agnarsson. The work is divided into five short movements, each inspired by a specific memory the composer had of Agnarsson, delicately tracing visual poems and often employing double stops reminiscent of the iconic spare, open harmonies Icelandic music is known for. I was instantly captivated.

Guðmundsson’s next Alluvium is a beautiful mix of left-hand pizzicatos and double stops. Written in 2015 for Danish cellist Brian Friisholm for a concert series where he paired a new composition with J.S. Bach’s fifth suite and for which he matched the suite’s scordatura tuning, Alluvium beautifully depicts the natural Icelandic phenomenon where glacial rivers “flow over vast sands and fork into different directions before rejoining and flowing to the sea.” Veris (“Youth” in Latin), commissioned in 2019 for Danish cellist Toke Møldrup, inspired by the work Youth by Ditlev Blunck (part of a series of works about the human life cycle) employs a spare use of electronics to “freeze” short moments in time while the cello moves on. It’s unclear whether the electronics are written to be played by the cellist or by some other means, but the effect is truly stunning.   

Hallgrímsson’s Solitaire is a work of five short movements originally written in 1969 and premiered by the composer, an esteemed cellist who turned to composition full time in 1989. It was revised and dedicated to cellist Gunnar Kvaran who premiered this version in 1991. It shares the intense spareness of the previous compositions while enriched with textures. The fifth movement Jig is a favourite and could stand alone. Hallgrímsson’s Solitaire ll ends with an energetic Perpetuum Mobile to close the album. 

I’ve always been a fan of solo instrumental works and this album will be close by for a long time.

Daniel Strong Godfrey – Toward Light
Cassatt String Quartet; Ursula Oppens; Eliot Fisk; Nicole Johnson
New Focus Recordings FRC467 (newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/daniel-strong-godfrey-toward-light-three-quintets)

Pianist Ursula Oppens, cellist Nicole Johnson and guitarist Elliott Fisk join the New York-based Cassatt String Quartet in three quintets by American Daniel Strong Godfrey (b.1949).

Godfrey says his piano quintet from 2006, Ricordanza-Speranza (Recollection-Hope) “is shaped by a sense that both memory and hope remain elusive and at odds.” Adagio poco rubato begins tentatively, builds to an intense climax, then subsides, returning to the opening uncertainty. Con fuoco’s swirling strings and Oppens’ percussive outbursts are followed by lyrical calm. The brief Interlude, a cadenza for solo piano, leads to the finale, Adagio poco rubato; con anima, a celebratory dance gradually fading to silence.

The title of the string quintet. To Mourn, To Dance (2013), is taken from Ecclesiastes’ list of opposites, each thing having its own “season.” The grim Prelude is an adagio filled with dense, chromatic textures. Danza is transparent, graceful and wistful. Interlude, another adagio, spotlights the “extra” cello’s extended lament. The vigorous Fugue-Tarantella, with violins cheering over grinding cello strokes, ends the work in thrilling fashion. 

Godfrey’s dark-hued guitar quintet, Toward Light (2023), was composed, he writes, amid widespread “fear, exasperation and tenuous optimism.” Constantly shifting in tonality, meter and string sonorities, it describes, says Godfrey, “a journey from faltering light and prayerful expression” (Dusk: Prayer) “to a somewhat macabre minuet-like dream music” (Midnight: Dance), the Cadenza for solo guitar leading to the finale (Dawn: Escape) “that runs desperately toward the light – one hopes – of a better day.”

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Penumbra
Gamelan Alligator Joy
Songlines (songlines.com/release/penumbra)

Founded in 1990, Gamelan Alligator Joy is a Vancouver area composer-musician collective here represented by 13 musicians. Fifteen years in the making, Penumbra is its third release. During that time five longtime composers of the group – Michael O’Neill, Mark Parlett, Sutrisno Hartana, Andreas Kahre, Sam Salmon – kept busy composing and workshopping new works.

Seven new compositions for Javanese gamelan gadhon are featured, exploring the expressive potential of gamelan to render “a multiplicity of emotions and thoughtscapes.” 

The opening track, Hartana’s Bahureksa, incorporates instruments and songs from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi skilfully blended with Javanese gamelan, plus solo and choral sections. As a Javanese-born gamelan player, teacher and composer in Canada, Hartana’s inspiration is culled from his own extensive cross-cultural musical journeys.

Parlett’s Dice Over Easy superimposes his minimalistic rhythmic, structural and harmonic language onto Javanese tonal modes and performance practices. His compositional strategy here features instruments timbrally outside the gadhon’s tuned and untuned percussion. An example: high keening suling slendro solos. Softly plucked strings of the ukelin (a rare hybrid zither) also meander across the soundscape, while occasional fretless bass lines add the frisson of surprise.

Peregrinations in Palindromnia is Parlett’s through-composed meditation for gadhon, driven by the eloquently dramatic poetic narration by DB Boyko. Spare music and text evoke aspects of place, transience, death and return in the natural world, finding solace in a sense of suspension.

Salmon’s terse 96 Tiers references the 1966 proto-punk song 96 Tears, yet musically it quickly develops into a richly sonorous process piece, divided into 96-beat sections. 96 Tiers also pays homage to early minimalist music – roots of which were coloured by gamelan.

Don’t adjust your playback volume: Kahre’s Let N = N requires musicians to play instruments with their fingers, dispensing with typical mallets. This focus on delicate tactility extends to the bowed string rebab melodies sensitively played by Hartana woven through the gauzy percussive textures.

O’Neill’s ambitious 15-minute Mode of Attunement features a prominent part for retuned piano dynamically rendered by Rory Cowal in dialogue with the gadhon. O’Neill cautions that it’s “not a concerto for retuned piano, [but rather it] artfully explores subtleties around integrating the two forces.” A totally unexpected yet effective outsider instrument here is the jaw harp, outlining piano rhythms in one movement. The work takes us on a “nocturnal journey in 11 episodes filtered through hypnogogic consciousness.”

O’Neill’s Grotto: Ventriloquial Investigations on the other hand is a Beckettian spoken-word mini-opera with O’Neill voicing both himself and Seamus, his wisecracking baritone puppet. Adapting original and borrowed texts, it’s set in an underground grotto evoking both Plato’s cave and Jung’s unconscious. We hear songs, jokes, instrumental gamelan interludes and philosophical sparring, all “circling around the ultimate unanswerable questions.”

Penumbra stands as Gamelan Alligator Joy’s latest statement of its long commitment to creating new music beyond the received borders of Javanese gamelan genre, style and approach. Both an eloquent summing up of Vancouver’s gamelan founding generation and a collection of accomplished postclassical music looking to the future, Penumbra represents a high-water mark on Canada’s gamelan-centred music shores.

Dreaming in Gamelan
Bill Brennan; Andy McNeill w/Hugh Marsh
Independent (brennanmcneill.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-in-gamelan)

Traditional West Javanese gamelan sounds are explored in new memorable, soothing soundscapes by Canadian composers/multi-instrumentalists Bill Brennan and Andy McNeill, with electric violinist Hugh Marsh contributing on a few tracks. Brennan’s wide-ranging percussion, piano performance career includes being a member of the Toronto-based Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan. Film/television composer McNeill (bass, electronics, etc.) is also fascinated by the gamelan. 

Brennan and McNeill worked together scoring a CBC documentary in 2001 and then decided to record their compositions one week in Brennan’s living room on borrowed Evergreen Club traditional gamelan instruments. After studio mixing and overdubbing, it was put away and untouched for years. A recent Evergreen Club performance at Massey Hall inspired Brennan and McNeill to expand and complete this release.

The first nine short tracks are about three minutes each. Tunnels of Light introduces the listener to diverse ambient sounds, starting with a repeated single note. A form of gong is followed by a repeated gamelan melody. The blending of traditional gamelan with western instrumental and electronic sounds,  rhythms, dynamics and textures creates a unified soundscape to single note fade. Title track Dreaming In Gamelan has a calming, reflective repeated melodic start. Attention-grabbing minimalist lines and multi-layering of instruments ground this sparse/gentle to dense/sonic composition. The closing ten-minute Reverie is mysterious and comforting, featuring held notes.

Brennan and McNeill highlight the gamelan with sparse bell tones, ambient jazz, experimental musical styles, electroacoustics, instrumentation, arrangements, improvisations and unexpected effects, producing hypnotic new sounds to relish!