01 Art Choral 2Art Choral Vol.2 – Baroque I
Ensemble Artchoral; Matthias Maute
ATMA ACD2 2421 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/art-choral-vol-2-baroque-i)

Those seeking the mesmerizing and magical in their choral listening will enjoy this album of works by 16th and 17th century experimenters such as Gesualdo, Schütz, Monteverdi and Purcell —part of an ATMA series comprising fifteen volumes of music from 16th to the 21st centuries. Matthias Maute and Quebec’s Ensemble ArtChoral achieve a deft ensemble dynamic while also delivering the soloist flair that is so needed in this repertoire. 

The opening track, Il Lamento d’Arianna by Claudio Monteverdi, sparkles with the “meraviglia” (wonderment) which the composer sought to depict, as discussed in the recent book Monteverdi and the Marvellous by Canadian scholar Roseen Giles. From the first words, (“Lasciatemi morire / Let me die”), their intensity and precision dissolves at times to sweetness, as it should.

Carlo Gesualdo’s music is known for its colourful word-painting, involving shifts from exaggerated chromaticism to melodious diatonicism. Especially effective on this recording is the reading of Tristis et anima mea, a church responsory set with the florid and dramatic style of a madrigal and delivered with the panache that Gesualdo deserves. 

Maute approaches the Purcell pieces differently than this reviewer has heard or sung before. Especially with Man that is Born of a Woman – and In the Midst of Life, into which it segues without credit – the pace feels so rushed that in places the dissonances and text settings fly by rather than lingering painfully as seems apt for a funeral piece. It is a bold choice, but the madrigal-like delivery is effective in such sections as “He fleeth as it were a shadow / and ne’er continuith...” One can’t imagine that the choir of Westminster Abbey sung it this way at Queen Mary’s funeral, for which it was composed, but this performance cleverly points to Purcell’s Italian influences and stands as an alternate interpretation of this rich and beloved repertoire.

02 Monteverdi Lost VespersMonteverdi – The “Lost” Vespers
The Thirteen; Matthew Robertson
Acis APL54148 (acisproductions.com/the-thirteen-monteverdi-lost-vespers)

The Thirteen is an acclaimed professional orchestra and choir of soloists that reimagines vocal music, from early chants and masterworks to contemporary world premieres. Their most recent recording, The ‘Lost’ Vespers, is the culmination of a five years passion project by the ensemble’s artistic director and founder, Matthew Robertson. The ‘Lost’ Vespers is a curated compilation that draws from Monteverdi’s end of life volumes, Selva morale e spirituale (1640-1641) and Missa et salmi (1650). With Robertson as conductor and Adrienne Post as concertmaster, The Thirteen presents a meticulously historically informed performance of Monteverdi’s sacred work. The ensemble is comprised of eight singers and seven instrumentalists, including violin, organ, cello, cornetto and theorbo. The songs alternate in the typical style of a vespers, generally between joyful celebrations and solemn reflections. 

The carefully considered musical choices are reflected throughout the album; the exquisite push-pull of pure sonorities that represents different parts of a vespers; the word painting, specific shape of sounds and rhythms executed with craftsmanship and precision, especially noteworthy in the Magnificat primo and in the Nisi Dominus; and the virtuosity that not only creates the expected beautiful outcome of technical capacities, but also a deeply intimate and affecting musical experience. 

The liner notes of the album provide a valuable source of information on the project. Robertson first shares the journey that led to the recording of The ‘Lost’ Vespers and Dr. Steven Plank, Professor of Musicology at Oberlin College and Conservatory, then provides a wealth of information that can guide or enhance the listener’s experience.

The ‘Lost’ Vespers was recorded at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America in Washington, DC in October 2023.

03 Toronto Mendelssohn ChoirRemember – 130 Years of Canadian Choral Music
Toronto Mendelssohn Choir; Jean-Sebastien Vallee
ATMA ACD2 2882 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/remember-130-years-of-canadian-choral-music)

Fifteen a cappella works, variously sung in English, French, Latin, German, Hebrew and Arabic, offer what Rena Roussin, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s musicologist-in-residence, calls in her booklet notes “a time capsule of musical touchstones and reflections across 130 years of Canadian choral music history,” the span of the choir’s existence. (Seven selections are performed by the choir’s 24-member professional nucleus, the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers.)

The two-CD set opens with the collection’s title work, Stephen Chatman’s hauntingly beautiful Remember, the second of his Two Rossetti Songs. It’s followed by the gentle hymn, Jesus, Lover of My Soul, by the TMC’s founder and first conductor, Augustus Stephen Vogt. The one piece not by a Canadian, Mendelssohn’s robust setting of Psalm 43, Richte mich, Gott, was performed at the eponymous choir’s debut on January 15, 1895. 

Other standouts are Harry Somers’ elaborate arrangement of She’s Like the Swallow, Healey Willan’s much-loved An Apostrophe to the Heavenly Hosts (at nine minutes, the collection’s longest work) and Imant Raminsh’s luminous Ave verum corpus. Also represented are Ernest MacMillan, Srul Irving Glick, Peter-Anthony Togni, Christopher Ducasse, Andrew Balfour, Jocelyn Morlock, Stuart Beatch, Shireen Abu-Khader and Stephanie Martin, the last six by pieces composed between 2018 and 2022.

At only 84 minutes, this wide-ranging collection could easily have been augmented with works by three significant Canadian choral composers, surprisingly absent – R. Murray Schafer, Ruth Watson Henderson and Eleanor Daley. Nevertheless, there’s much lovely music and lovely singing here to enjoy.

04 JohnBurge MataHariSongbookJohn Burge – The Mata Hari songbook
Patricia O’Callahan; John Burge
Centrediscs CMCCD 34424 (cmccanada.org/shop/cmccd-34424)

The early 20th century erotic Javanese dancer and European courtesan, Mata Hari (1876-1917) is still surrounded by an aura of mystery, more than a century since her passing at the hands of a French firing squad, following her rather dubious and hasty conviction on charges of spying for Germany during World War I. Notorious is the word irrevocably tied to this fascinating and complex character… was it her so-called traitorous activities that caused her downfall, or was it a generalized male fear of her seductive, political powers? Thrilling, versatile and accomplished soprano Patricia O’Callahan in a creative partnership with composer/pianist John Burge and writer/director Craig Walker explore these questions (and more) in their brilliant one-woman, two-act, high-end cabaret production One Last Night with Mata Hari. The recording of that presentation has resulted in the stunning ten-song collection presented here, focused on the night before Hari faced her death.

The plot sees Hari recalling her life and times for the staff and holy sisters in the place of her internment. First up is the lilting An Officer to Marry where O’Callahan deftly captures the irony of young Hari’s desire to upgrade her social situation by her assignation with the sadistic and vile Rudolph McLeod.  Burge’s superb pianistic skill injects each composition with energy and verity, while the equally superb libretto by Walker paints a sometimes terrifying and complex picture of Hari’s life. Of special beauty is the love song to her sickly child, You’ll Be My Sun, where Burge and O’Callahan perform with a near telepathic communication and O’Callahan soaring to the outer reaches of her remarkable register.   

Each of the compositions here contain undeniable elements of German Art Song. O’Callahan creates a three-dimensional portrait of a survivor, traumatized by her times as well as by her peripatetic and unstable reality. This is a thoroughly compelling and satisfying cycle of songs – expertly performed and recorded.

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05 DD JacksonD.D. Jackson – Poetry Project
D.D. Jackson; various  artists and vocalists
Independent (ddjackson.bandcamp.com)

D.D. Jackson is a JUNO and Emmy winning composer, producer and jazz pianist. In the spring of 2021, eminent Canadian poet George Elliott Clarke commissioned Jackson to set music to one of his poems. This initial collaboration snowballed into The Poetry Project, an album of 13 songs mostly arranged for piano and voice with small ensembles of varying instruments. The last song in the set, Daedalus’ Lament (Giovanna Riccio) is performed by D.D. Jackson and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra via Musiversal. 

In addition to Clarke and Riccio, The Poetry Project features poems by Canadian writers Ayesha Chatterjee, Luciano Iacobelli, Irving Layton, Micheline Maylor, Bruce Meyer, Al Moritz, Libby Scheier, Choucri Paul Zemokhol and Chinese poet Xiaoyuan Yin. The performers on the album include many well-known names, including Laila Biali, Dean Bowman, Yoon Sun Choi, Ethan Cronin, Sammy Jackson, John Lindsay-Botten and Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez.   

The Poetry Project includes a variety of themes. For example, I call (Zemokhol) is about the poet rediscovering his mother’s Egypt. Daylight Shooting in little Italy (Iacobelli) is about an incident Iacobelli and his family witnessed. On Silence (Chatterjee) is a layered and imaged interpretation of silence and how in its stillness we can truly hear. Self-Composed (Clarke) is a song from a father to his daughter and 2641 Fuller Terrace (also by Clarke) is an homage to guitarist Gilbert Daye. 

For all of the intensity of the words chosen for The Poetry Project, Jackson writes surprisingly dynamic and rhythmic music with both fluid and, at times, challenging vocal lines that sway in all of the right places. Kudos to him for transforming sometimes long pages of poetry with its own rhythmical pacing into song length material that has retained the writers’ intentions and emotions.

06 Anastasia MinsterSong of Songs
Anastasia Minster; Canadian Studio Symphony Orchestra; Felipe Tellez
Independent (anastasiaminster.com)

The title of this disc Song of Songs by Anastasia Minster may suggest it contains works based on The Song of Songs, that biblical book sometimes attributed (albeit erroneously) to King Solomon, legendary for his superlative wisdom and extraordinary wealth. But don’t let that distract you for it does – in a not-so-oblique way – reference themes of love, the heart and soul and metaphor of its biblical namesake. 

Moreover, what the recording is may also not be everyone’s idea of an orchestral one – although it is quite extraordinary. Survey the performance of pianist and vocalist Minster, and you will discover someone incapable of being temperamentally innocuous, bland or emotionally disengaged from the black-velvet-dark content. With her silvery timbre – lustrous in the high notes and like molten lava in the lower ones – Minster rises to the challenge; nay she bursts through the glass ceiling of this impassioned, shadowy repertoire.

In the artistic execution – vocal and orchestral – and in the warmth and detail of its recording, the disc is flawless. I do miss printed lyrics and believe (too punctilious a demand on my part perhaps) that every vocal disc ought to come with a booklet of texts. In her defense, I have to say that this gorgeously poetic disc may be a worthy exception. Minster is an uber-articulate vocalist and it is not particularly difficult to follow these contemporary art songs without the guide of printed lyrics.

07 Sheehan AkathistBenedict Sheehan – Akahist
Choir of Trinity Wall Street; Artefact Ensemble; Novus NY
Bright Shiny Things (BSTC-0210 brightshiny.ninja/akathist)

Benedict Sheehan’s epic oratorio came to be as a poignant reminder of the dark days of the Stalinist purges. The language of this work has at its heart Akathist: Glory to God for All Things, an Eastern Orthodox service in plainchant, as a hymn of thanksgiving. However, the musical topography traversed by Sheehan’s work references all of fallen humanity – from the earliest times to that of our day. 

The sweeping chorales on two discs centre on the theology of Ecclesia (the community of the church) and Sapientia (holy wisdom) and appear to proffer the blinding light of God’s invisible spiritual wisdom emanating from the Heavens as a salve to heal the grief of the evils on earth. 

Melding liturgical songs (antiphons, responsories, sequences and hymns) sung by the glorious voices of several soloists and choral groups, accompanied by an instrumental ensemble into a modern-day symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum (a symphony of heavenly revelations) Sheehan has created a harmonious combination of different musical sounds, woven into the divine cosmic harmony. 

In fact Sheehan has created a powerful metaphor that unites the physical and the spiritual realms that brings both participant and listener into a closer – mystical – relationship with the divine. The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, the Trinity Youth Chorus, combined with the voices of the Artefact Ensemble and the Downtown Voices, together with instrumental ensemble NOVUS NY bring the spontaneity of Akathist to life.

08 Martinaiyite AletheiaZibuokle Martinaityte – Aletheia: Choral Works
Latvian Radio Choir; Sigvards Klava
Ondine ODE 1447-2 (ondine.net/index.php?lid=en&cid=2.2&oid=7307)

On Aletheia, celebrated Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė has used the wordless language of the heart to drive the emotional spirituality of these four outstanding choral works. Using thrillingly sensuous music of bright acoustic colours and resonant fades, she has created a vocabulary defined by note durations, attack and intensities through throat-singing, drones and other vocal devices. In fact, she has brought new meaning and beauty to the mystique of spiritual music. 

In the titular first work on this disc Martinaitytė evokes the horrors of the Russian invasion of Lithuania, a personal trauma that was triggered by the more recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ululations is a work similar to Aletheia. Although it is not born of the despair and trauma of the latter work, it is born of an elemental, “ululating” wail. 

Chant des Voyelles employs voices to mimic the curves of sculptures by the cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz. And although The Blue of Distance has no particular setting, this sweeping Whitmanesque piece completes the exquisite cycle of mystical chorales vividly interpreted by the Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava.

01 Flute AlorsScherzi Forastieri
Flute Alors!
ATMA ACD2  2818 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/scherzi-forastieri)

Speaking as a former recorder player, I can say, with good authority, that it can be a frustrating instrument: limits to timbre and dynamics can quickly outweigh the joys of how easy it is to make your first decent sounds. The Montreal-based recorder quartet Flûte Alors! is a shining example of the other side of this coin, revealing for years now how astonishing this instrument can be when it’s well played. 

Although known for its eclectic repertoire, the latest offering from the quartet focuses solely on Italian music of the early Baroque. The title is taken from a collection of canzoni written in 1611 by Giovanni Cangiasi and translates roughly as “pleasantries of a foreigner.” Of the 18 tracks on this CD, ten are by Cangiasi and they really are very cheerful and inventive. Like most music from this period, the curiosity for modern ears lies in all the ways in which the conventions of the high baroque have not yet been formed: vestiges of renaissance harmonies and dance forms present themselves again and again. 

I particularly liked the “clucking hens” of Cangiasi’s La Furugada and the athletic and sinuous theme of Nicolò Corradini’s La Bizzarra; both of these feature that light-speed tonguing only possible on the recorder. Execution throughout is spectacular: virtuosic and tasteful ornaments, spot-on tuning, infallible passage work. Yes, the colours are limited but the group has selected interesting and varied music and as far as taking the listener back in time, it is thoroughly and delightfully convincing.

02 More BachMore Bach, Please!
Concerto Italiano; Rinaldo Alessandrini
Naïve OP8454 (arkivmusic.com/products/more-bach-please)

Over the years, composers and performers as diverse as Anton Webern, Procol Harem and the Modern Jazz Quartet have all drawn inspiration from the music of J.S Bach. The Rome-based Baroque ensemble Concerto Italiano directed by Rinaldo Alessandri is the latest ensemble to refashion the music of the Leipzig cantor in this intriguing Naïve label recording titled More Bach, Please!. The aim of the endeavour was to create three new works based upon pre-existing material by Bach with Alessandrini drawing from a number of sources.

The Ouverture in the French Style BWV831 for solo keyboard was originally published in 1735 as the second half of the Clavier-Übung (paired with the Italian Concerto). Here, the appeal is three-fold. Not only are Alessandrini’s arrangements meticulously constructed but the movements were thoughtfully chosen. Furthermore, the playing itself is stylish and elegant with the ten-member ensemble producing a warmly cohesive sound in which violinist Boris Begelman and violist Ettore Belli deliver particularly polished performances.

The Partita for flute, strings and continuo and the eight-movement Ouverture in G Major for strings and continuo utilize various sources including those from the Violin Sonata BWV1016, the keyboard Partitas BWV825 and 828 and the Ouverture BWV820. Again, the ensemble performs with a solid conviction with flutist Laura Pontecorvo’s sensitive and controlled tone melding perfectly with the string ensemble.

How could Bach not have approved of these arrangements? He himself frequently transcribed and reused his own music (and that of others). With modern technology AI can undoubtedly produce a competent refashioning of a composer’s work, but there is still ample room for the human touch and creativity, as this recording so admirably demonstrates.

03a Carnaval Edna SternSchumann: Carnaval and Kinderszenen
Edna Stern
Orchid Classics ORC100338 (edna-stern.com/recordings)

The Young Schumann
Charles Owen
Avie Records AV2647 (avie-records.com/releases/the-young-schumann-carnaval-op-9-•-papillons-op-2-•-intermezzi-op-4-•-abegg-variations-op-1)

The evergreen Carnaval is the main work on two new recordings of music for solo piano by Robert Schumann. There is an exciting sense of youthful impetuousness in Edna Stern’s recording, with fast movements taken very quickly and slower movements treated flexibly, with a generous use of rubato throughout. The quirkiness of Schumann’s language is brought to the fore as Stern emphasizes Schumann’s many sudden accents and contrasts of dynamics. Listen to the sense of improvisation in the Valse noble and the breathtaking abandon Stern brings to the infamously difficult Paganini. The final pages of the closing March are truly thrilling. This is high-octane playing, capturing a sense of live performance on the wing in a warmly recorded acoustic.  

03b Young SchumannIn comparison, Charles Owen’s performance prizes sensitivity of phrasing and clarity of texture over sheer visceral excitement. Accents and inner voices are less prominent, and tempos are less extreme. This is a carefully considered performance, though this serious-mindedness doesn’t always translate into the same thrill of excitement that Stern produces. Owen fills out his album with Schumann’s first two published works, the Abegg Variations, Op.1 and Papillons, Op.2. I find Papillons, in particular, a much fresher performance, with light textures and dancing rhythms that emphasize this music’s roots in the ballroom. Owen also includes the rarely heard Intermezzi, Op.4, in a committed performance that makes one wish these six pieces were heard more often. The confident swagger of the first piece, the syncopated playfulness of the second, and the varied moods of the fifth are all vintage Schumann. The clarity of the recorded sound complements Owen’s overall textural precision and beauty of tone.

Stern’s coupling is the popular and often-recorded Kinderszenen, Op.15. These “Scenes from Childhood” can sound overly precious in the wrong hands, but Stern manages an appealing freshness and innocent charm. There is originality too, in Stern’s own composition which ends her recording. The title, To-nal or not-to-nal, refers to the pull in contemporary writing between tonal and atonal harmonies. In five short sections inspired by literary quotations (Schumann, too, took much inspiration from the literature of his time), Stern’s work is a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of textures and colours. 

Lovers of Schumann’s piano music will enjoy the contrasting approaches Stern and Owen bring to these inspired works.

04 Frederick BlockChamber Works by Frederick Block
ARC Ensemble
Chandos CHAN 20358 (shop.rcmusic.com/products/chamber-works-by-frederick-block)

After fleeing from Europe to New York City in 1940, Vienna-born Friedrich Bloch (1899-1945) resumed composing as “Frederick Block.” In the few remaining years before his death from cancer, Block busily composed many works, including three symphonies, his seventh opera and the brief, five-movement Suite, Op.73 for clarinet and piano (1944) in which jaunty playfulness alternates with wistful lyricism. 

Far more substantial are three works dating from 1928-1930, filled with the lush songfulness of Viennese late-Romanticism. In the Piano Quintet, Op.19, two buoyant movements, with melodies resembling those of Erich Korngold, frame a nostalgia-perfumed slow movement. The sweet, slightly decadent sentimentality of a fin-de-siècle Viennese ballroom permeates the four lively movements of Block’s String Quartet, Op.23.

Echoes of Korngold re-emerge in the opening Andante of Block’s Piano Trio No.2, Op.26, followed by a sprightly scherzo marked Molto vivace, a ruminative Adagio and the cheerful Vivace-Tango, not only pre-dating but also, for me, more entertaining than anything by Astor Piazzolla.

This is the latest in the Music in Exile series curated by Simon Wynberg, artistic director of Toronto’s ARC Ensemble, devoted to unheralded composers displaced or suppressed by war or dictatorship. Wynberg discovered Block’s compositions while exploring archives at the New York Public Library. Thanks to him, and the ensemble’s fine musicians – violinists Erika Raum and Marie Bérard, violist Steven Dann, cellist Thomas Wiebe, clarinetist Joaquin Valdepeñas and pianist Kevin Ahfat – the music of yet another deserving composer lives again.

05 Zlata ChochievaWorks for Piano and Orchestra – Prokofiev; Rimsky-Korsakov; Tsfasman
Zlata Chochieva; BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; Karl-Heinz Steffens
Naïve V8448 (zlatachochieva.com/music)

Recordings of two of the three composers (certainly not these compositions, though), may be abundant and varied. They may be performed with attention to historical practices or conceived as a series of romantic flights. But what strikes you through her performances of Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev, Tsfasman is that Zlata Chochieva doesn’t impose doctrinaire impulses on these three orchestral works but explores – with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karl-Heinz Steffans – a range of expressive and rhythmic nuances. 

Her playing is absorbing and sensitive, full of insightful phrasing, reflective subtlety and joie de vivre. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Piano Concerto in C-sharp Minor, Op.30: Note that the choice of this work (not operatic extracts from Scheherazade) puts a spotlight on the composer’s genius for infusing his works with primary instrumental colours, and progressive harmonies, particularly in the third, Allegro movement.

Prokofiev, on the other hand, was a genius of the piano, but his concertos – among the most inventive ever written –  are rarely performed. This Piano Concerto No.2 in G Minor, Op.16 is a case in point. It begins as an almost backward-looking composition but the performer in him soon takes over and by the time we get to the Finale - Allegro tempestoso movement we are presented with the composer’s barnstorming prowess. 

Tsfasman’s Jazz Suite is a glowing echo of his idol, Gershwin. Consummate performances by pianist and orchestra bring an alluring dénouement to this programme.

01 Hetu Symphony 5Two Orchestras, One Symphony: Jacques Hetu – Symphony No.5
National Arts Centre Orchestra Canada; Orchestre Symphonique du Québec; Toronto Mendelssohn Choir; Alexander Shelley
Analekta AN2 8890 (nac-cna.ca/en/orchestra/recordings/hetu-5)

The combined forces of two orchestras and a symphonic choir, all under the superb leadership of conductor Alexander Shelley, came together in March, 2024 for this magnificent recording of Jacques Hétu’s bold work. Indeed, it was a work the composer was never to hear in performance, as he passed away three weeks before its premiere in February, 2010.  

This recording is a reminder of Hétu’s skill and significance as one of Canada’s finest composers. Having studied as a young man with Clermont Pépin and Jean-Papineau Couture in Canada and Lukas Foss at Tanglewood, he went to Paris in 1961, won the Prix D’Europe and furthered his studies with Henri Dutilleux and Olivier Messiaen. 

Paris is the subject of the fifth symphony, with programmatic titles depicting pre-World War II, the Invasion, the Occupation and, finally, a complex and glorious choral finale to the text of Liberté by Paul Elouard (brilliantly set previously by Francis Poulenc in his cantata Figure humaine). Hétu’s setting is defiant and harmonically thrilling. The whole symphony packs an emotional punch and possesses an anti-totalitarian message that’s important to hear at this particular time. 

The performance is sincere and committed, with some fine wind and brass solo work. The choir’s sound is full and strong. The recording was the culmination of a number of live performances during an extensive tour through Ontario and Québec. It is a tribute to the close association that the NACO had with the composer over many years, having premiered his third symphony in 1971 (under Mario Bernardi’s direction) and taken it on a tour of Europe in 1990. Alexander Shelley continues to develop important large-scale projects at the National Arts Centre for which we can be grateful and proud. 

02 Graham FlettThree of Twelve and Another
Graham Flett
Redshift Records (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/three-of-twelve-and-another)

Ontario composer Graham Flett’s album of two electric guitar works has an intriguing backstory. The composer writes, “One summer I happened upon an old 12-string guitar that was extremely but very intriguingly out-of-tune. Hearing it made me consider how an ensemble of such out-of-tune guitars might sound.” Inspired by that untuned chance encounter Flett began to explore four separate, yet related guitar tunings of the conventional 6-string electric guitar. In the final score he meticulously stipulates the tuning of each of the 24 strings of the four guitars, their web of interrelationships taking into consideration string harmonics and other acoustic phenomena. 

There’s also poetry. Flett took inspiration from W.H. Auden’s Twelve Songs. Thus, the three movements of his Music for Four Retuned Electric Guitars are tagged with Auden’s poetic phrases characterising each movement: the silent statue; the smokeless hill; the hot sun. Stillness, heat and perhaps negative space are being evoked.

The second work Unadorned, for solo electric guitar, is no less complex sounding. Here Flett explores a continuous series of three-note chords employing many harmonic groupings. The use of messa di voce - a musical swell here applied to a guitar note or chord - removes the initial attack of the plucked guitar strings, leaving puffs of sonic clouds to linger, gently pulse or grate against each other. It’s an album signature. 

Spain-based guitarist Elliot Simpson, who took on the considerable task of retuning and then multi-tracking the guitars, renders these enigmatic, challenging works with commitment, elegant musicianship and attention to detail.

Listen to 'Three of Twelve and Another' Now in the Listening Room

03 Imagine Many GuitarsImagine Many Guitars
Tim Brady; Instruments of Happiness; Bronwyn Thies-Thompson; Janelle Lucyk; Sarah Albu; Marie-Annick Beliveau
Redshift Records TK550 (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/imagine-many-guitars)

Imagine Many Guitars is real; a well-thought out and brilliantly performed electric guitar recording by Montreal-based Tim Brady, who composed, played and recorded all the guitar lines, which he multi-tracks in the four compositions here.

The opening 25-minuteThis one is broken in pieces: Symphony #11 (2019-2024) is held together by Brady’s eight electric guitars (with effects pedals), and overdubbed sopranos Bronwyn Thies-Thompson, Janelle Lucyk, Sarah Albu and Marie-Annick Béliveau singing texts taken from the late Ian Ferrier’s book Coming & Going (2015). This very symphonic music with classical and contemporary overtones features guitar effect backdrops to guitar grooves alternating with vocals – suspenseful a cappella singing and moving spoken lines. Guitar strums and held notes add an echo effect to high sung notes.

Slow, Simple (2022) for 20 electric guitars is not really simple sonically but is easy-listening! The tempo is slow, with Brady’s low held chords opening and the guitars build as the chords slowing change with simultaneous descending lead lines, held notes, strumming, single note atonal lines and held note effects.  

Five Times: four guitars (2022), a shorter five-movement change of pace, features a more open and playful style and a rocking lead guitar in Everywhere, and more atonal experimental lines resembling playing at home sounds in Alone.  

The earlier four-part work (very) Short Pieces for (jazz) Guitar (1979) shows off a jazzier side of Brady’s playing with clean lines, rhythmic strums and accents.

Brady is amazing and inspirational throughout Imagine Many Guitars.

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