Chamber Music of John Burge
Ensemble Made in Canada
Centrediscs CMCCD 21715

John Burge (b.1961) has produced a large body of instrumental and vocal works, while teaching at Queen’s University since 1987 and serving as president of the Canadian League of Composers (1998 to 2006). His Flanders Fields Reflections for string orchestra won the 2009 JUNO for best Canadian composition. The three works on this disc display Burge’s characteristic neo-romantic coupling of melodiousness with strong rhythmic drive.

Ensemble Made in Canada, formed in 2006 and winner of the CBC Galaxie Rising Stars award, is currently ensemble-in-residence at Western University. The ensemble commissioned this CD’s major work, the 34-minute Piano Quartet (2012), in which two highly propulsive movements, the first employing minimalist elements, bracket an elegiac Adagietto containing a scherzo (Presto misterioso). All three movements are dramatic attention-holders.

The disc opens with Pas de Deux (2010), performed by the Ensemble’s violinist Elissa Lee and cellist Rachel Mercer. Its structure mirrors that of the balletic duo and the music’s warm lyricism and rocking rhythm could easily be choreographed for a real, danced love-duet.

The ensemble’s other pair, violist Sharon Wei and pianist Angela Park, perform String Theory (2011), composed as the test piece for the 2012 Eckhardt-Gramatté competition. It’s “a compendium of string effects,” writes Burge, designed to challenge the competitors’ techniques, yet it’s no hodge-podge of mere “effects,” thanks to its constant melodic and rhythmic forward motion.

Three very engaging pieces, very engagingly performed.

Tim Brady – The How and The Why of Memory
Symphony Nova Scotia
Centrediscs CMCCD 21515

Montrealer Tim Brady is a fertilizing force on the Canadian new music scene. A composer, electric guitarist, improvising musician, concert and record producer, his active administrative engagement with the Canadian concert music community over the past few decades has been multifaceted and deep. On this album, as distinct from previous Brady albums I have reviewed in these pages, we hear his composer chops applied to orchestral forces: a symphony bookended by two string concertos, one for violin and one for viola. They are admirably rendered by Symphony Nova Scotia, conducted by Bernhard Gueller.

Listening to The How and the Why of Memory: Symphony #4, (2010-2013), cast in a single continuously unfolding movement, I was repeatedly reminded of textures and rhythmic and harmonic ideas of composers active in the early- to mid-20th century. Perhaps those allusions are implied by the title. Brady however never allows such superficial affiliations to get in the way of musical momentum or dramatic gesture, characteristics embedded in his musical voice which engage listeners on an emotional level.

Brady’s very confident Viola Concerto (2012-2013) is dominated by its violist Jutta Puchhammer-Sédillot’s cocoa-coloured sound and brilliantly lyrical playing. It is also imbued with a heart-on-sleeve expressiveness, counterpointed by poised classicist melodic phrases and minimalist sequences. The multi-hued orchestration is endowed with plenty of rhythmic excitement and harmonic movement, relieved by mysterious moments of elegiac repose. The last section, marked “groove,” is particularly effective and texturally surprising. The Viola Concerto is my favourite work on the album and it makes a very valuable new addition to the international viola concerto repertoire.

Stefan Wolpe Vol.7 – Music for Violin and Piano
Movses Pogossian; Susan Grace; Varty Manouelian
Bridge Records 9452 (bridgerecords.com)

Armenian-born Movses Pogossian, first-prize winner of the 1985 USSR National Violin Competition and now based in California, is the featured soloist in the latest of Bridge Records’ landmark series devoted to German-Jewish/American composer Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972).

Wolpe’s four-movement, half-hour-long Violin Sonata (1949) is among his most enduring works, spanning an emotional gamut from playful and joyous to melancholy and anguished, and all the way back again. Pogossian and pianist Susan Grace provide all the intensity and flexibility required for its varied moods.

Pogossian is joined by his wife, Varty Manouelian, in two pieces, Duo for Two Violins (1924), with motoric echoes of Bartók, and the short Two Studies for Two Violins and Piano (1933).

The CD opens and closes with unaccompanied works, Second Piece for Violin Alone (1966), a three-minute quirky charmer that would make an effective recital encore, and the 15-minute Piece in Two Parts (1964), a thoughtful, thought-provoking series of brief, pithy phrases, influenced perhaps by Wolpe’s interest in Oriental meditation. The disc also includes a 29-bar fragment from an unfinished Second Violin Sonata (1959).

The detailed booklet notes are by Toronto musicologist Austin Clarkson, who studied with Wolpe and became, in 1981, the first board chairman and general editor of the Stefan Wolpe Society.

This is intriguing repertoire that deserves to be heard.

John Cage: Four
Quatuor Bozzini
Quatuor Bozzini CQB1414 (actuellecd.com)

Montreal’s Quatuor Bozzini has been together for 16 years and has recorded 15 CDs of the kind of challenging contemporary music that they specialize in, including works by Canadians Malcolm Goldstein, Tim Brady and Jean Derome and international figures like Steve Reich and James Tenney. The experience tells as they take on John Cage’s three works for string quartet, realizing distinctive versions in the process.

The earliest of the compositions, String Quartet in Four Parts (1949-50), is a work descriptive of the four seasons with the composer’s notes encouraging light string contact and no vibrato. The work’s structure and minimal harmonies create an unlikely resemblance to the melodic purity of medieval music. Leaping ahead to 1983, Thirty Pieces for String Quartet presents the musicians with both demands and choices: each piece lasts about a minute, with each musician given a sequence of notes to be fitted into the “time bracket.” The musicians individually choose between microtonal, tonal and chromatic options, but the parts are not directly related to one another except for the coordination of segment lengths. The music that emerges within these configurations is rich in complexity and convergence, a kind of collaboration between composer, performer and listener.

The final work, Four, from 1989, is the most radically reductive of these works, still employing time brackets but offering choices from its sparse materials to all the performers. The result is spacious but continuous with tonal structures that may gently evolve or appear transient. The cumulative work is a serene landscape in which mysterious elements emerge and disappear.

Quatuor Bozzini assumes the substantial demand that this music makes on its performers: to at once realize the work in shaping its form while allowing the components to maintain their distinct, non-structural identities. If the Arditti Quartet’s recordings of these works (on Muse from the early 1990s) have long stood as masterful readings (they worked closely with Cage on Four), Quatuor Bozzini does a fine job of traversing this music, inevitably creating new works in the process.

The Korngold Project Part One
Daniel Rowland; Priya Mitchell; Julian Arp; Luis Magalhães
TwoPianists Records TP1039282 (twopianists.com)

Pianist Luis Magalhães, originally from Portugal and now living in South Africa, is co-founder of TwoPianists Records and its Korngold Project, which here makes an auspicious debut, daring to go head-to-head (in the Suite) against Sony’s recording (SK 48253) by the all-star cast of Joseph Silverstein, Jaime Laredo, Yo-Yo Ma and Leon Fleisher.

To my very pleasant surprise, in a movement-by-movement comparison, Magalhães and the European-based string players outdo the famous foursome in every way, bringing much, much more punch and passion to this punchy, passionate work, one of three Korngold composed for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost an arm in World War I. The balances here are much better, too, with the strings as closely miked as the piano, while on the Sony CD the strings seem muted, lacking focus and presence. (The flaccid Swedish performance on DG 459 631-2 isn’t worth considering.)

The Piano Trio doesn’t sound at all like a composition by a 12-year-old – but it is! – and it’s filled with real music, late-romantic Viennese gemütlichkeit laced with many of the already-distinctive melodic and rhythmic gestures that would remain with Korngold all his life. It, too, receives a vigorous, upfront performance, recorded live, as was the Suite, with well-deserved applause at its conclusion.

The Korngold Project will focus on the composer’s chamber music. This Korngold enthusiast, for one, looks forward to Part Two and beyond.

Nordic Sound – Tribute to Axel Borup-Jørgensen
Michala Petri; Lapland Chamber Orchestra; Clemens Schuldt
OUR Recordings (ourrecordings.com)

Danish & Faroese Recorder Concertos
Michala Petri; Aalborg Symphony; Henrik Vagn Christensen
OUR Recordings (ourrecordings.com)

August brought me two CDs of modern recorder concertos from Denmark, released on the Danish label OUR Recordings, and what a pleasant smörgåsbord they are (sorry, couldn’t resist that one).

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Nordic Sound is a special tribute to Axel Borup-Jørgensen (1924-2012), one of Denmark’s most influential modern-era composers, and four of the six works on the program are for recorder and strings. Inspired by the Danish landscape, Bent Sørensen creates a mystical and spacious atmosphere in Whispering, and the elegant pointillism and rhythmic complexity of the Faroese composer Sunleif Rasmussen’s Winter Echoes elicits wonderful and virtuosic playing from all parties. Mogens Christensen requests a panoply of flutters, pips, chirps and multiphonics from Michala Petri in his Nordic Summer Scherzo, all of which makes for a tour-de-force of bird imitation, and Thomas Clausen’s four-movement Concertino provides a tasteful shift to the neo-Baroque. Two pieces for strings, by Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen and Borup-Jørgensen himself, are beautifully played by the members of the Lapland Chamber Orchestra under Clemens Schuldt.

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Thomas Clausen: Concertino for recorder & strings (2014)
II. Largo

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Danish and Faroese Recorder Concertos also features Petri as recorder soloist but this time with the excellent Aalborg Symphony Orchestra under Henrik Vagn Christensen. A novel by Italo Calvino was the inspiration for Rasmussen’s four-movement Territorial Songs, and his inventive, multi-faceted use of orchestral colour and depth of melodic expression is impressive. Chacun son son by Gudmundsen-Holmgreen begins with the whimsical combination of bass recorder, bass clarinet, clarinet and bassoon, and the various sections of the orchestra are pitted against one another, as one might expect given the piece’s title. The recorder is well incorporated into the woodwind section here, rather than being cast in a more typical soloist’s role, and the instrument, particularly the bass recorder, balances well with the others, something unlikely in an unplugged live performance. Thomas Koppel’s Moonchild’s Dream is the third contribution to the program and its lovely yet unmistakable film vibe is no surprise, considering that it was originally commissioned for a video.

As always in this repertoire, Petri continues to show why she remains a leading inspirer of new repertoire for the instrument. I just wish that the excellent solo clarinetist from the Aalborg Orchestra had been credited, as the violinist was.

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Thomas Koppel: Moonchild's Dream
III. Prestissimo - Liberamente - Prestissimo

Sunleif Rasmussen: Territorial Songs
Concerto for recorder and orchestra (2009) 
V. Leggiero

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For One to Love
Cecile McLorin Salvant
Justin Time JTR 8593-2 justin-time.com

American singer Cecile McLorin Salvant put the jazz world on notice with her first major release in 2013. With a voice that is at once fresh and traditional, Salvant won numerous accolades such as Female Vocalist of the Year from the Jazz Journalists Association, Jazz Album of the Year by the Annual DownBeat International Critics Poll and a Grammy nomination. Still only in her mid-20s, the bar was set high for her sophomore release – and For One to Love is a continuation on the same fine musical path she set for herself.

The impeccable pitch, diction and control are still there, as are top-notch band mates. The choice of material is similar to the first release – a few standards wrought in interesting new ways, such as The Trolley Song, made famous by Judy Garland and which includes a brief, amusing imitation of Garland. Also, in what’s becoming a bit of a trademark, Salvant takes a run at some low down dirty blues – like Growlin’ Dan. These aren’t my favourites, largely because Salvant’s classically trained voice just doesn’t suit the material, but they’re fun. And that’s true of a lot of Salvant’s delivery – theatrical and broad and a little flighty, never really landing on one style or sound. I imagine she’s very entertaining to see live. There’s also a sprinkling of original compositions and the opener Fog really exemplifies the whole album – artful, skilled and not entirely certain what it wants to be.

Cold Duck
S4
MonotypeRec Mono 096 (monotyperecs.com)

No relation to the sparkling wine of the same name, Cold Duck is instead a series of nine biting improvisations by S4, an ad-hoc, all-star quartet of soprano saxophone innovators – one British, John Butcher, and the others Swiss: Urs Leimgruber, Hans Koch and Christian Kobi, the last of whom is also a member of the all-saxophone Konus Quartett, which interprets notated music.

Designated by Roman numerals, Cold Duck’s tracks, lasting from barely one minute to more than 12, could be the auditory sound track of an experimental ornithologist’s laboratory. But unlike such trial and error endeavours, the quartet deliberately creates timbres that range from police-whistle harshness to fipple-like songbird echoes, with a goodly collection of tongue slaps, tongue pops and snorts thrown in for good measure. At the same time its skill is such that III is harmonized as intimately as if by a bel canto choir, but open enough so that every strain, partial and split tone is audible as the four work through tonal variations. Severing and re-attaching with plasticine-like continuity on VII, tremolo whines and lip burbles maintain a shrill pitch until the final moment when one sharp tone pushes the other reeds into more comfortable interaction. Then on the extended IV, S4 members pump air bubbles through their horns with a velocity that resembles electronic processing. After the narrative is magnified enough, it’s squeezed like a balloon, slowly deflating as growls and yelps mix with puffs and squeaks. Subsequently, united circular breathing leads to an aural rainbow-like expansion of tonal colours involving all four.

That climax may be one of the fundamental triumphs and instructive pleasures of Cold Duck. No matter how many instances of sound separation exist, no individual voice is more prominent than the others. The result is a program that confirms group cohesion while fittingly sampling a saxophone choir’s outermost elements.

Passion World
Kurt Elling
Concord Jazz CJA-36841-02 (concordmusicgroup.com)

When I first tried to listen to Kurt Elling’s new album Passion World, I had a hard time getting through it. That’s because whenever I got to the seventh track – his cover of U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name – I had to stop, hit repeat and then just take a moment to recover. It’s a powerful and beautiful take on an already powerful and beautiful song. Once I managed to move on, I realized it’s an album full of such takes.

Passion World was born out of Elling’s desire, when touring, to deliver a song that would give the audience a taste of their country’s own music – what he refers to as “charmers.” The collection of songs then developed into a project for Jazz at Lincoln Center and, now, an album. Leaning mainly toward ballads, Passion World is filled with songs about longing and a sense of place. The project also exemplifies collaboration in its many forms. The opening tracks set the tone as Elling puts lyrics about home and the road to two instrumentals by John Clayton and Pat Metheny before getting into more traditional territory with Loch Tay Boat Song featuring a modern woodwind arrangement played by the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. Arturo Sandoval’s Bonita Cuba is another fine example of musical minds meeting. The band members all play major roles in the success of this album and, in particular, John McLean’s arrangements and guitar work elevate this collection. 

With
John Russell
Emanem 5037 (emanemdisc.com)

As the musicians of the so-called second generation of British improvisers move into their seventh decade, many celebratory concerts are marking their undiminished skills. One of the best, preserved on this 78-minute disc, took place last December as 60th-birthday-boy, guitarist John Russell, played four sets with six improvisers. The result confirms the adage that free music keeps you young.

Measuring all four, the two shorter meetings are like extended bagatelles. On The Second Half of the First Half, Russell matches wits with his contemporary, sound-singer Phil Minton, who has never found a noise he couldn’t duplicate. As Minton bellows, burbles, moans, whistles and hiccups, the guitarist’s folksy picking is perfect accompaniment for a bawdy verbal Punch & Judy show with the singer taking all the parts. The Second Half of the Second Half signals a rare return to the electric guitar for Russell to battle the psyched-out, dial-twisting distortions from Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore. Propelling electronic shrieks, flanges and trebly rebounds likely not heard since Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck worked together, Russell rocks out while keeping the duet chromatic and with unexpected aleatory highlights.

True sonic sustenance comes with the extended trios. The First Half of the First Half unites three separate musical strands into congenial whole cloth. Trading licks with trumpeter Henry Lowther’s muted puffs as if the two are Art Farmer and Jim Hall in a cool jazz situation, Russell also plinks wide linear accents which lock in with the studied sweeps of violinist Satoko Fukuda expressing her classical training. Staccato stopping on the guitarist’s part knit the loose ends so the garment has no holes. Even more impressive is The First Half of the Second Half, where the trio is filled out by a younger – bassist John Edwards – and an older – tenor saxophonist Evan Parker – free-music lifer like himself. With the bassist digging a foundation scooping darker tones from within his wooden instrument, Russell uses resonating flanges and slurred fingering to build a modernist edifice, upon which Parker’s architecturally inventive vibrations provide the decorative detailing. With confirms Russell’s – and free improv’s – adaptability, foretelling many more creative years for both.

Pete Townshend’s Classic Quadrophenia
Alfie Boe; Billy Idol; Phil Daniels; Pete Townshend; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Robert Ziegler
Deutsche Grammophon 479 5057

British rock icon Pete Townshend has embarked on a project to arrange his music into orchestral scores for future generations to perform. The album Quadrophenia was first released in 1973 by The Who. Written by Pete Townshend, the rock opera is set during the 1960s Mod movement and tells the story of the troubled youth Jimmy. Composer, orchestrator and Townshend’s life partner Rachel Fuller took on the monumental task of arranging it for symphony orchestra, choir and singers. The resulting Classic Quadrophenia is an intriguing mix of rock anthem, movie soundtrack, Broadway musical, opera and classical symphonic overture.

Tenor Alfie Boe sings with a satisfying mix of operatic passion and rock star angst in the role of Jimmy, originally sung by Roger Daltrey. Boe makes the part his own, especially in the closing Love Reign O’er Me where his powerful expressive singing against the colourful choir washes, tinkling piano and thundering percussion transforms the rock anthem into an operatic showcase. Billy Idol as Ace Face sings with his trademark gruff presence; Phil Daniels is convincing in the part of Jimmy’s dad; while Townshend as the Godfather makes satisfying yet way too brief vocal and guitar appearances. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Robert Ziegler and the London Oriana Choir under Dominic Peckham perform with joyful conviction. An accompanying DVD supports with visuals and informative commentaries.

Missed here in performance is the Who’s rock stadium energy, stage presence and spontaneous musicality, yet Classic Quadrophenia soars as a more classical music alternative.

Asia Beauty
Ron Korb
Humble Dragon 2015 (ronkorb.com)

Ron Korb’s new CD, Asia Beauty, is a charming hybrid – sad, sweet melodies with a Chinese and sometimes a Celtic feel – played on a variety of instruments, traditional and modern. Korb’s melodies are accompanied by small ensembles which include an astounding 27 musicians playing 15 different plucked, bowed or hammered Chinese, Celtic and Western string instruments, one of which is always the piano, playing harmonic progressions recognizably of the Western tradition.

Reflecting on this amalgam of East and West, Korb muses in the liner notes, “In the 1930s...Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Hanoi were meeting places between East and West. ...I wondered how the cultures intermingled and all the secret romances that must have occurred.” Later he writes about the “bittersweet feelings” and “sublime romantic tragedy” expressed by both traditional and contemporary pop Asian music. The same atmosphere is to be found on most of the tracks on this CD.

Most intriguing, however, is the Celtic influence, which never seems far away in Korb’s music, helped along at times by, but never dependent on, Sharlene Wallace’s Celtic harp and Korb’s penny whistle. In fact the Chinese bamboo flute (dizi) and the traditional Chinese clarinet (bawu) seem made for the Celtic idiom, which mysteriously and frequently appears.

Both Eastern and Western musical currents are part of who Ron Korb is as a musician and as a man. He has totally assimilated the musical language of both traditions; the result is music which is really neither one nor the other but both.

Case in point is Montreal alto saxophonist François Carrier. Unknowable (NotTwo Records MW 928-2, nottwo.com), showcases a touring partnership he and his Montreal associate, drummer Michel Lambert, have formed with Krakow-based acoustic bass guitarist Rafal Mazur. Authoritatively using both the guitar and double bass properties of his instrument with equal proficiency, Mazur is like the third partner in a fantasy ménage à trois, adding to the situation without disrupting the others’ union. An equal opportunity companion, his hand taps add percussive weight to Lambert’s rolling ruffs and pops, while his array of thumb and finger positions animates Carrier’s skyward smears or stressed multiphonics. Listening Between, the first track, could serve as a description of how the three operate throughout: not only shadowing each other’s propelled textures, but also anticipating sound patterns to fit what will soon be heard. Carrier’s initial churlish reed-straining on that track for instance is soon pulled towards accommodating mezzo-like melisma as Mazur strums his guitar as if he was backing an operatic tenor. With Lambert beating away stoically, the bass guitarist loops out multiple theme variations, as compressed buzzes slide from Carrier’s Chinese oboe for a unique interaction. Broken-octave communication characterizes Unknowable, the date’s centerpiece. Like an extended length of hose unrolling, Mazur’s staccato finger style sets up a continuum that’s matched by the saxophonist’s rubato cries which retain some sweetness. Eventually rim shot crackles and cross sticking from Lambert resolve the outbursts into a satisfying thematic whole. Still, it’s indisputable that the three didn’t want to let go of what they achieved musically. Like guests at a great party who dawdle before leaving, Springing Out, the next track, and Dissolution, the concluding, barely 90-second one, come across as coda and then as coda to the coda of the title performance.

A duo consisting of American pianist Matthew Shipp and Polish multi-reedist Mat Walerian illustrates another collaborative application. Involved with his own trio and other combinations, Shipp has worked sporadically with Walerian, who plays alto saxophone, soprano and bass clarinet plus flute, yet the ten selections on The Uppercut – Live at Okuden (ESP-Disk 5007 espdisk.com) document fulfilling rapport between the two. Like a method actor, Walerian portrays a different character on each horn, but the output is united in finding unique sounds. Because of this, Shipp’s narratives encompass everything from multi-note Art Tatum-like emphasis, out-and-out abstract key and string ratcheting reflecting both new music and free music, shaggy keyboard carpets of Chopin-like recital-ready intermezzos and primitive blues and early jazz echoes. The last is apparent on Blues for Acid Cold where a restrained lounge-like exposition from Shipp gradually hardens into a blues conception following Walerian’s rangy, elongated clarinet tone. By the climax the two could be Jimmy Noone and Earl Hines in 1920s Chicago. In contrast, what begins with the pianist and alto saxophonist propelling slick mainstream timbres at one another on Love and Other Species – think Phil Woods and Jim McNeely – evolves into a breathtaking display of complicit split tones, as the two deconstruct the melody as if it were a building being dynamited to smithereens, then rebuild the tune into a solid edifice for a sympathetic ending. As for the consecutive Free Bop Statement One and Free Bop Statement Two, a flexible intro works up from creamy Johnny Hodges-like alto playing plus juddering, pre-modern jungle-band keyboard splashes to attain a series of motifs encompassing key clips and dissonant reed squawks, though never abandoning underlying swing. Conventional and avant-garde simultaneously, Black Rain may be the CD’s most evocative track. A soothing duet, characterized by gentle keyboard patterning and graceful bass clarinet breathing, as if Shipp and Walerian were a long-time married couple finishing each other’s sentences, it’s suddenly ripped apart and replaced with Shipp’s key clips and harp-like piano string strums hewing out an ascending sonic path and Walerian’s intermittent tongue stops and flute peeps. Concluded with sparse sounds that wouldn’t be out of place in a new music recital, the two confirm their versatility and the vitality of the disc.

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Another application of this international formula is the Ocean Fanfare quartet. Consisting of Polish trumpeter Tomasz Dąbrowski, two Danes, alto and tenor saxophonist Sven Dam Meinild and bassist Richard Andersson, and American drummer Tyshawn Sorey, the fusion results in an exceptional modern mainstream unit on its cleanly recorded CD Imagine Sounds Imagine Silences (Barefoot Records BFREC O40 barefoot-records.com), which consist of six Dąbrowski and three Meinild originals. Despite having composed the bulk of the material, Dąbrowski isn’t any more prominent in performance than other members. Like a new drawing superimposed over an existing one, Ocean Fanfare has the instrumentation and left-field orientation of an Ornette Coleman quartet plus the stamina of the Jazz Messengers. Crucially, Sorey’s broken time sense and cymbal swishes are less prominent than Art Blakey’s, leaving supple booms from Andersson’s bass to define the rhythmic bottom. Featuring the drummer’s time-clock-like pacing, a track such as Lotus positions crying split tones from the saxophonist and melancholic plunger work from the trumpeter for an emotional narrative. 7 Days to Go extends the Coleman-like comparison, starting off echoing Lonely Woman until the skirmish takes on the strength of a battle with a double bass vamp and interlocked horn bluster. On the other hand the crackling velocity that propels US 12 resembles that of a classic bop 78, with each player’s contributions tossed every which way, until a pseudo-march sequence introduces some spectacular brass plunger tones and climaxes with conjoined twin-like horn unison. By the final Meditation (on a Visit from France), the band appropriately trades in blunt reed smears, kazoo-like brass hums and popping bass and drum beats for a stable but buoyant ending. Following trumpet and saxophone tone slacking, the theme slips away leaving behind a bass string pluck and cymbal resonation.

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4 is 2 Tight

Lotus

I'll Repeat Only Twice

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Politically Nichi Nichi Kore Ko Nichi by the P.U.R. Collective (ForTune 0056 006 for-tune.pl) is instructive in a non-musical manner since the cohesive seven tracks of free improvisation match a Polish combo of guitarist Maciej Staszewski, drummer Tomek Chołoniewski and Krzysztof Knittel on electronics with two reed players, Alexey Kruglov from Russia and Yuri Yaremchuk from Ukraine. Rather than being at loggerheads like their respective governments, the players create a collective program where the keening vigor of Yaremchuk’s bass clarinet and soprano saxophone plus the jagged bites from Kruglov’s alto saxophone, basset horn and block flute snuggle alongside the others’ expressions like Matryoshka nesting dolls. Unlike these wooden Russian toys no player is more inside or outside than another. You can get an idea of this Eastern Bloc pact on U 01 where chalumeau lowing from the clarinet moves alongside uniform guitar strums as electronics create a convulsive ostinato of peeps and static. Even after the line mutates into a free jazz blow out from the saxophonists, intricate finger-style guitar lines and drum pops mute the explosions enough, while a moving block flute cadenza signals the finale. These ex-Soviets have a sense of humour as well. Cutting through the harsh flamenco-like runs from Staszewski and unorthodox beats from Chołoniewski on Extreme 07, Kruglov inserts some mocking rooster crows that presage his quicksilver reed smears and split tones as the factions unify distinctively. 

Of course it’s still common for a visiting international soloist to hook up with Polish musicians to tour and record. One notable instance of this is Panta Rei (ForTune 0047 034 for-tune.pl), where Marco Eneidi Steamin’ 4 consists of the leader, an American alto saxophonist living in Vienna, plus three high-functioning Poles: tenor saxophonist Marek Pospieszalski, bassist Ksawery Wójciński and drummer Michał Trela. Comfortable in two-saxophone situations, Eneidi’s communication with Pospieszalski is at the highest level, often suggesting a funhouse mirror, where similar phrases from each are distorted with unique reflections. Ironically titled, Made in Pole Land highlights an emotional two-step which breaks down into speedy tremolos with snorts, horks and nasal buzzes goosed by Wójciński’s pacing and Trela’s wooden cracks. The swirl of buzzing double bass strings energizes White Bats Yodelling, although whether the flying rodents saluted with violent mammalian split tones, rumbling basso honks and agitated wing-like swishes are Polish or American isn’t made clear. What is clear is that, like intrepid (tone) scientists, the two saxophonists chase every phrase and note to the end, wringing each sonic nuance, expansion and implication from it. With measured bumps, but no bombast, the drummer follows up Wójciński’s sul ponticello intro to the concluding wordplay of Arco M. Adding additional string twanging later on, both he and Trela maintain the swinging pulse as the soloing of Eneidi and Pospieszalski contrast their intercontinental styles. When one architecturally builds a sleek Le Corbusier-like modernist line, the other counters with rococo detailing; then they switch roles with conclusive cooperation. Panta Rei may have been a first meeting for the American and the Poles, but the high level of musicianship exhibited by all confirms why collaborations involving adventurous Polish stylists and equally impressive out-of-country musicians are becoming increasingly common.

With each successive CD, Darren Sigesmund has become a more distinctive and accomplished composer and bandleader. His previous one, Strands III, made brilliant use of Eliana Cuevas’ wordless vocals on ensemble passages and here he employs two New Yorkers, violinist Mark Feldman and pianist/accordionist Gary Versace, to create dramatically different instrumental textures in company with his own trombone. While that last CD had a certain Brazilian feel to it, New Quintet (darrensigesmund.ca) sometimes has a distinctly French quality, Feldman’s dramatic and impassioned violin combine with the reediness of Versace’s accordion to suggest an ancient café ambience. Much of the music has a limpid lyricism but it moves with an underlying rhythmic power, propelled by bassist Jim Vivian and drummer Ethan Ardelli. Sigesmund is as tuneful an improviser as he is a composer, bringing a special, slightly muffled warmth and subtle inflections to his every solo.

When Ross Taggart passed away at 45 in January of 2013, he was among Vancouver’s most prominent musicians, an accomplished saxophonist, pianist and composer who inspired the love and respect of his community. Several recordings have been dedicated to Taggart since his death, but two new releases highlight the breadth of that community. Legacy, The Music Of Ross Taggart (Cellar Live CL122914480, cellarlive.com) by the Jill Townsend Big Band is a substantial document of his work by a band in which he had played saxophone for a decade. It’s a crisp, precise big band with some outstanding soloists, including special guest Campbell Ryga who plays soprano sax on three tunes. Townsend and guitarist Bill Coon have done a fine job of arranging Taggart’s small-group music (and even a piano solo) for big band, ranging from fairly conventional, hard-swinging fare like Don’t Call Before 10 to the CD’s finest work, Light at the End of the Tunnel, on which Coon expands Taggart’s imaginative harmonies into a lustrous orchestral gem. Reminiscent of Kenny Wheeler’s work, it’s highlighted by Brad Turner’s flugelhorn solo.

A very different work is also dedicated to Taggart: A Bowl of Sixty Taxidermists (Songlines SGL 1611-2, songlines.com) by Waxwing, a trio that seems to create its own genre, a kind of jazz suffused with folk music. Much of the music is composed by saxophonist (and over-dubbed multi-instrumentalist) Jon Bentley, who played in Taggart’s quartet and possesses a gorgeous tone from the school of Stan Getz. The mood is reflective, at times playful, rather than somber, with cellist Peggy Lee and guitarist Tony Wilson contributing strongly melodic compositions and improvisations to this often spare and resonant music. Taking its title from a phrase of Taggart’s, the work is less about loss than passage, a gentle trip into the unknown. Lee’s contributions include a distinctive arrangement of the traditional Clementine while Wilson’s tunes commemorate both Taggart (For Ross) and drummer Claude Ranger (For Claude), who disappeared in 2000.

Canada has had few sustained specialist jazz labels and nothing else like Toronto’s Sackville, running from its launch in 1968 by John Norris and Bill Smith until Norris’ death in 2010, recording music from stride piano to the avant-garde. Chicago’s Delmark has now revived the label, and many of Canada’s best jazz recordings are back in circulation, like guitarist Reg Schwager and bassist Don Thompson’s Live at Mezzetta (Sackville 2057, delmark.com). The two craft intimate, masterful versions of a series of standards, bringing fresh perspectives to In a Sentimental Mood and Willow Weep For Me.

One unusual item from the catalogue is Humphrey Lyttelton in Canada (Sackville SK3033, delmark.com) which matches the English trumpeter with a stellar Toronto supporting cast, including Scottish transplant Jim Galloway on saxophones and the highly flexible rhythm section of guitarist Ed Bickert, drummer Terry Clarke and bassist Neil Swainson, here tempering their more modernist bent. While Lyttelton gained fame in the English trad revival, here he blends a Louis Armstrong influence with a swing style rooted in Basie and Ellington. The music is lively, joyous and consistently well-played, its happiest moments coming on the West Indies-flavoured Caribana Queen.

Guitarist Ken Aldcroft and trombonist Scott Thomson present a series of four freely improvised duets on Red & Blue (Trio Records TRP-D503-021, kenaldcroft.com/triorecords.asp). The music is continually shifting and evolving, moving from rapid-fire runs to pointillist exchanges and dialogues in which one offers empathetic support to the other. Aldcroft stays close to the traditional timbre of a lightly amplified jazz guitar, while expanding the vocabulary with percussive effects and skittering chord runs that move in and out of tonal expectations; Thomson’s explorations of the trombone include barnyard noises, extreme upper register effects and very rapid tonguing. However, it’s what they have in common that’s most significant: a willingness to reduce their sounds to whispers and to listen to one another intently and creatively. This is subtle, challenging music that responds best to the same kind of close listening that the musicians bring to it.

Scott Thomson also appears on another recent recording that may be the least abstract CD of the year. Led by drummer Dave Clark, the Woodshed Orchestra is a joyous musical free-for-all, part brass band and part parody thereof. On Brass Bandit (Independent, thewoodshedorchestra.com), the 11-member group includes other distinguished improvisers like bassist Michael Herring and saxophonist Karen Ng. Here you might think of it as a New Orleans funeral parade that keeps getting lost. A couple of times it wanders into streets that lead to the Balkans and the Adriatic, while at others it appears to get the sequence confused, celebrating first (Love Letter to New Orleans with a great blatting solo from Thomson) and mourning later (Prayer) with funk in between (The Griff). Everybody in the band sings, including Susanna Hood, though her vocal talents aren’t required for group recitatives like Pennie + Mousie’s Antidotal Lullabye and A Politician. The CD lasts a brief 26 minutes, but it has energy and spirit to spare. 

On July 13, 1955 an audience at the Berkshire Music Festival in Tanglewood heard the debut performance by the newly formed Beaux Arts Trio with their founding members Menahem Pressler, piano, Daniel Guilet, violin, and cellist Bernard Greenhouse. The personnel remained intact until 1960 when Guilet was replaced by Isidore Cohen and in 1987 Peter Wiley replaced Greenhouse. Since then there were other new faces including violinist Ida Kavafian in 1992. However, it was Pressler who was always at the helm and the mere mention of the Beaux Arts Trio immediately triggers images of Pressler at the keyboard scarcely ever taking his inspiring eyes from his colleagues. The trio disbanded in 2008. In 2013, Toronto’s favourite venue, Koerner Hall, proudly announced a concert to celebrate Pressler’s 90th birthday with Pressler himself playing with the New Orford Quartet in a program of Beethoven, Brahms and R. Murray Schafer.

There have been other notable trios over the years: Cortot, Thibault and Casals; Edwin Fischer, Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Enrico Mainardi; and many others where prominent musicians who had solo careers occasionally came together for the pleasure of playing with each other. Particularly vital was the special combination of Isaac Stern, Leonard Rose and Eugene Istomin. None, however, had the longevity of the Beaux Arts, albeit with fresh faces in the strings but never without the omnipresent Menahem Pressler. 

Because of their impeccable musicianship and extensive repertoire, the Beaux Arts Trio – Complete Philips Recordings, all 137 of them, is a unique treasure house of hallmark performances of trios and some larger works (4788225, 60 CDs). Everything that they recorded for Philips is here, including the complete trios by Haydn, Mozart (2), Hummel, Beethoven (2), Mendelssohn (2), Schubert, Brahms (2), Dvorak and Schumann (2) plus those by Arensky, Chausson, Granados, Hummel, Korngold, Shostakovich and others. Add many more, in addition to works for larger chamber ensembles with assisting artists. There are two versions of the Beethoven Triple Concerto: in their 1977 recording with Bernard Haitink and the London Philharmonic, the Beaux Arts Trio meant Pressler, Cohen and Greenhouse but in 1992 with Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Beaux Arts Trio meant Pressler, Kavafian and Wiley. The Schumann Trio No.2 Op.80 in 1966 finds Pressler, Guilet and Greenhouse. In 1971 there are Pressler, Cohen and Greenhouse. By 1989 we hear Pressler, Cohen and Wiley. The few multiple versions are manna to keen listeners whose pleasure it is to pay close attention to interpretive differences over the years. In truth, regardless of the personnel, every single performance is arresting.

One of the pitfalls of listening to a succession of different versions of the same works in a collection of this calibre is that they appear on different discs and with other works. If you are not careful, you can start the wrong track and be drawn into a different work. In listening to this second Schumann trio I mistakenly started the two Mendelssohn trios and absolutely cannot leave them (that’s what I’m doing now). 

A recent batch of Blu-ray discs from Arthaus Musik includes a 1983 production of Turandot from the Vienna State Opera. The conductor is Lorin Maazel, Eva Marton is Turandot, José Carreras is Calaf, Katia Ricciarelli is Liu, John-Paul Bogart is Timur, the dethroned King of the Tartars and Waldemar Kmentt is Altoum, Emperor of China. Only the long stairway is depicted in this set. The bejewelled costumes and masks reflect the opulence of this mythical place. From its first moment this production seems to be on fire with passion and conviction. The singers have all been caught at the peak of their careers. The 37-year-old Carreras’ blazing performance shows what supreme powers he had. Maazel, absolutely inspired and focused, has the orchestra playing at the top of its form. The unfettered, audiophile-quality sound combined with an elemental, totally assured Eva Marton in the role make for a gripping, compelling Turandot, one I would not want to be without (Arthaus 109095).

One hundred years have passed since the birth of Sviatoslav Richter and collectors around the world still seek out his recordings and await new releases of live concerts. Doremi continues to release these recordings, reaching Volume 24 (DHR-8043), with a program of Bach and Beethoven. All but one work were recorded in Moscow in 1948, a dozen years before Richter was permitted to travel to the West and here is an indication that there was a serious Bach performance tradition in Russia in the earlier part of the 20th century. Richter went beyond the popular keyboard works and included the Sonata in D Major, BWV963, an early work rarely performed and seldom recorded. Apparently he gave several such recitals with significant Bach content. Russian radio recorded some of them with what appears to have been an advanced technology for the time, providing us with high quality sound. In the years after he was free to travel he included Bach on a regular basis including the French Suite, BWV813 from Dublin in 1968. The 1948 performances of the Capriccio in B Major, BWV992, Fantasia in C Minor, BWV906, English Suite, BWV808, concluding with Beethoven’s Sonata No.22 Op.54, enjoy the same high quality sound.

Conductor Ferenc Fricsay was born in Budapest in 1914 and died in Switzerland in 1963. He studied under Bartók, Kodaly, Dohnányi and Leo Weiner. His instruments were piano, violin, clarinet and trombone. He was acclaimed throughout Europe, the United States and elsewhere, conducting all or most of the prominent orchestras and in many opera houses including Vienna, Berlin, London, New York, etc. Fricsay signed with Deutsches Grammophon in 1948, recording core classical repertoire and 20th century works. His 1958 Beethoven Ninth with the Berlin Philharmonic, Irmgard Seefried, Maureen Forrester, Ernst Haefliger and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was the first Ninth in stereo and has never left the catalog. Last year DG issued a box of all his symphonic recordings, a collection, I might add, that has provided endless pleasure. Ferenc Fricsay – Complete DG Recordings Volume 2, Operas and Choral Works is now available (4794641, 37 discs including rehearsal DVD and Ferenc Fricsay – A Self Portrait) with six Mozart operas, Carmen, Bluebeard’s Castle, Oedipus Rex, Flying Dutchman, Mahler Rückert-Lieder (Forrester), Haydn’s The Seasons, the Verdi Requiem and more. The listener will hear the young Fischer-Dieskau and many others whose names will or should resonate. This set will satisfy many wants. Complete contents are on the DG site, deutschegrammophon.com/us/cat/4794641.