New Shoes
The Bombadils
Borealis Records BCD243 (borealisrecords.com)

While the roots music duo The Bombadils live in Montreal they do get around, recording this, their third album, New Shoes, in a Bowen Island, BC, studio. Canadian Maritimer Luke Fraser and self-described “prairie girl” Sarah Frank share an abiding affection for North American and Celtic folk songs, fiddle tunes as well as European classical music. The resonance of those traditions permeates the album.

Frank’s supple soft voice is featured on most tracks accompanied by her idiomatically expressive fiddle and claw-hammer banjo. Fraser sings and plays incisive guitar and mandolin. Not that long ago both studied classical music at Montreal’s McGill University, their various affiliations coming through clearly in the clever La fille aux cheveux de lin. It borrows its melody from Claude Debussy’s piano piece of the same title, neatly adapted by Frank and set to a French poem by Parnassian poet Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle.

They also pay respects to the late American singer-guitarist Doc Watson and Rosa Lee Watson’s classic Bluegrass song Lone [Long] Journey in a classically tinged arrangement enriched with cello, their two voices neatly paired.

Fraser and Frank’s own songs are marked by originality. Even their arrangements are not allowed to fall into banality, but are rather infused with an old-timey feel while given the tang of the new. It’s a winning combination that’s quite satisfying musically. Twelve guest musicians – including Canadian banjoist extraordinaire Jayme Stone, cellist Kaitlyn Raitz and the expressive jazzy flute of Anh Phung – lend the album additional texture and musical polish.

I find New Shoes a wistful, charming and musically sure-handed outing, and look to the further evolution of this abundantly talented duo.

Parallels…to South Asian music from around the world
Vandana Vishwas
Independent VV003
(vandanavishwas.com)

Sexsmith Swinghammer Songs
Lori Cullen
True North Records TRD618
(loricullen.com)

Contemporary jazz/pop vocalist Lori Cullen’s latest release is an appealing and innovative project that is the result of an inspired collaboration between Cullen herself and two noted musicians – composer/guitarist Kurt Swinghammer and composer/lyricist Ron Sexsmith. It was Sexsmith who first suggested to Swinghammer that they write an album together specifically tailored for Cullen. The 12 tracks on the CD all feature lyrics by Sexsmith and are rife with Swinghammer’s carefully placed stylistic elements of the artists who defined the fertile pop eras of the 1960s and 1970s, including tips of the hat to Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Produced by bassist Maury Lafoy (who appears on the project), the musicians also include drummer Mark Mariash, keyboardist Robbie Grunwald and Swinghammer on guitar. Although Fender Rhodes and guitar are central to the instrumentation, the compelling, acoustic arrangements by Swinghammer also involve an array of diverse instrumental contributions, including finely crafted enhancements on trumpet, trombone, oboe, clarinet, vibraphone, marimba, English horn, recorder and more.

Cullen’s angelic voice wraps itself around each sumptuous melodic line and every composition has been constructed to highlight her superb, crystalline vocal instrument and intuitive knack for delivering frank emotional content and a quirky lyric. Memorable tracks include the gently swinging and faintly ironic The Face of Emily, which features a lush vocal arrangement, and the groovy, lighter-than-air bossa nova, New Love. A true gem is the heartrending duet between Cullen and Sexsmith, Off Somewhere.

This thoroughly pleasing and unabashedly romantic recording is a triumph for all three of these gifted artists and a stunning example of creative, musical symbiosis.

DoVira
DoVira
Independent (doviraband.com)

One of the many great aspects of living as a musician in Toronto is being exposed to music from diverse cultures without ever really leaving home, and subsequently being influenced by it in one’s own music. Listening to DoVira’s music is proof of this. Eight of the 10 tracks are their arrangements of traditional Ukrainian material. The tunes’ melodies and lyrics are still Ukrainian, but the rest of the music world surfaces with a blast.

Opening track Yest’Na Sviti opens with a more traditional rendition by vocalist/keyboardist Stacey Yerofeyeva which builds to a bigger rhythmic sound. A stadium rock setting is established in Dyki Husy with a busy drum groove (Derek Gray), bass (Mark Rynkun), guitars (Patrick O’Reilly) and sopilka (Mike Romaniak). A slower brief interchange between Yerofeyeva’s wailing vocals and guest Ernie Tollar’s saxophone lyric riffs is followed by a fast sax solo and a big instrumental blast ending. Folk music meets the avant garde in Oy Zijdy Ziron’ko as guest accordionist Emilyn Stam matches the vocal line and holds notes against repetitive rhythms, space-age effects and washes, leading to melodic folk material. Kolo, the closing original tune, is a toe-tapping fast get-up-and-boogie tune featuring virtuosic sopilka (Ukrainian wooden flute) playing and guest vocalist harmonies.

All the performers are great, with special kudos to Yerofeyeva’s colourful, wide-ranging vocal stylings. An English translation of the titles would add to the listening experience. This is world fusion music at its best!

Shadow & Light – The Rumi Experience
duoJalal
Bridge Records 9469 (bridgerecords.com)

Kingston Blues
Rhythm Express
Side Door Records
(rhythmexpressband.com)

With its second release, Rhythm Express has once again created a joyous musical outpouring, drenched in the potent, irresistible rhythms of both traditional and contemporized reggae with an added big dollop of urban funk. Drummer and percussionist Everton “Pablo” Paul acts as executive producer here, with legendary, versatile, international keyboardist and arranger Bill King producing. This thoroughly engaging project features 12 tasty tracks, including both covers of classic hits and original compositions – all gorgeously presented, sung and performed with the deepest of grooves and purest of intent.

In addition to Paul and King, the CD features talented guest artists Julian Taylor on vocals, guitarist Jon Knight of Soulstack, as well as skilled, soulful, sweet and funky singers Maiko Watson, Michael Dunston and Ammoye Evans. Also onboard is guitarist/engineer Shane “Shaky J” Forrest, bassist Jesse “Dubmatix” King, percussionist Magdelys Savigne and a first-rate horn section off Alexander Brown on trumpet, Michael Arthurs on tenor sax, Bobby Hsu on alto sax and Christopher Butcher on trombone.

Sizzling tracks include the dynamic cooker Welcome to Funkastan – a high-octane instrumental defined by King’s blazing horn-driven arrangement, propelling us all down the groove highway; the ridiculously funky Soul Nation featuring Watson and Dunston on volcanic vocals and Hercules, Dunston’s take on Aaron Neville’s glorious, authentic celebration of reggae style. Also outstanding are Jimmy Cliff’s Many Rivers to Cross, perfectly rendered by Julian Taylor and Hard Driver – Vivian Lee’s underground hit featuring electrifying chanteuse Ammoye Evans as well as a nostalgic, timeless, monaural sound. Put on your dancing shoes and enjoy!

A Luz (The Light)
Louis Simão
Independent (simaomusic.com)

Blue Glass
Pedram Khavarzamini; Siamak Aghaei; Efrén López
Independent (bit.ly/2dPS2uj)

The studio session which resulted in the Blue Glass album began life as an improvised collaboration between three modal music adepts. The santûr (Iranian hammered dulcimer) virtuoso Siamak Aghaei, and the Spanish fretless guitarist Efrén López were joined by the accomplished Canadian-Iranian tombak (Persian goblet drum) player Pedram Khavarzamini. Recorded in Heraklion, Greece in 2008, where the participants met while teaching at the Labyrinth Musical Workshop, the album has finally been released in Toronto on Khavarzamini’s label and is available on Amazon.com.

Two of the musicians may be known to Canadian world-music followers. Aghaei has worked with the Montreal-based ensemble Constantinople which was “conceived as a forum for creation, encounters and cross-fertilization” between the East and the West. Pedram Khavarzamini, who has been described as a “keeper of traditional Iranian tombak technique and repertoire” and also “an innovator who has pursued cross-cultural collaboration and musical experimentation,” served as the 2015/2016 world music artist-in-residence at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto.

López, who on this album plays exclusively fretless guitar, is well recognized in Europe also as a hurdy-gurdy, rabab, kopuz and laouto player in medieval and traditional music groups. Building on his in-depth practical study of several global modal musical systems including makam, dastgâh and raga, he has enjoyed a career working with master musicians of Greece, Turkey, Afghanistan and India.

The first four titles for the duo of Aghaei’s eloquent santur and Khavarzamini’s incisive tombak playing offer extended moments of sonic stillness, marvellously coordinated improvization and flashes of Persian virtuosity. The album takes off on an altogether different and exciting transcultural vein however when López joins them on fretless guitar in the last two tracks, Abyss and Minaayee. His plucked string instrument’s mellow baritone melodies, elaborated with plenty of modally inflected fretless note bends resonate eloquently against the santur’s treble voice and the tombak’s soft and subtle agogic accents. It is music which can produce an overall timeless and geographically ambient effect on the globally open-eared listener.

Tse Tak Bulo/That’s How It Was
ZeelliaChickweed Productions #ZL003 (zeellia.com)

With its mix of field recordings and original arrangements and compositions, Zeellia’s new album Tse Tak Bulo/That’s How It Was explores pre-Soviet Ukrainian migration to Canada. Containing snippets of interviews and songs from elderly migrants, which the ensemble founder Beverly Dobrinsky collected in Alberta and Saskatchewan in the 90s, the CD is both a historical document and an artistic statement. Zeellia’s approach to these traditional songs lives firmly in the realm of artistic re-interpretation, rather than an ethnographic recreation. With her mixture of vocal and instrumental textures, Dobrinsky takes great liberties with the found materials pushing them into the realm of original compositions rather than mere arrangements. The most striking track is Oy byv mene cholovik (My Husband Beat Me). In my own explorations of Ukrainian folk music, I have found that domestic abuse is, unfortunately, a common theme and I commend Zeellia for not shying away from it. Dobrinsky’s recomposition of the tune is a highly effective combination of playful rhythms and dissonant a cappella vocal harmonies punctuated by woodblock knocks. As I Walk across Canada is a gorgeously mournful song steeped in loneliness and nostalgia for the homeland left behind. Among other instruments, the album features the hurdy-gurdy, known as lira in Ukraine. Dobrinsky’s approach to the instrument both nods towards its traditional role as accompaniment to spiritual minstrel songs and reframes it in a new light.

Max Richter – Songs From Before
Robert Wyatt; Max Richter
Deutsche Grammophon 4795566

For some years now you could have confined your re-imagined and exploratory music CD buying to releases by the German-born composer, pianist and electronics manipulator Max Richter and found your shelves start to sing with depth and invention. And that would hardly be surprising. Richter is among the foremost of the talented new musicians who have developed a sharply individualistic, difficult-to-classify personal genre. Here, on Songs From Before, as is customary, roots in and branches from folk and classical often surface, but there is so much else going on: Richter skilfully, imaginatively and (by-and-large) subtly mixes in elements of electronic music, rock, contemporary composition and the occasional nod to the fantasy of poetic recitation.

Although most of the pieces develop from beguiling, elegant melodies, what makes them so special is Richter’s manner with arresting textures and colours – achieved not only with his keyboards, but also with the strings. These sonic creations stimulate mental pictures of mysterious narratives – especially when on Flowers for Yulia, Harmonium, Time Passing, Lullaby and Verses, Robert Wyatt is called upon to recite sparse verses – evoking the work of such chroniclers and visionaries as Bach and Arvo Pärt. And yet with every phrase unfolding a new mystery as if by aural magic, one is irresistibly drawn to this music because it is distinctly and uniquely a part of Max Richter’s own sound world. 

Land of Gold
Anoushka Shankar
Deutsche Grammophon 4795459

“Everyone is, in some way or another, searching for their own Land of Gold; a journey to a place of security, connectedness and tranquility, which they can call home,” writes sitarist Anoushka Shankar in the liner notes of her new album. Themes of separation, isolation, journey into the unknown, parental love and hope, are all inspired by the refugee crises across the globe and the current state of the human condition. Shankar is an evocative storyteller – her compositions (co-composed with Manu Delago) are intensely hued with raw emotion. The journey from darkness and uncertainty to light and acceptance is portrayed with a powerful musical drive and in collaboration with many wonderful musicians.

The album opens with Boat to Nowhere and Secret Heart – two sitar-driven numbers, featuring yearningly poetic cello lines (Caroline Dale) in the first and the dynamic Indian reed instrument shehnai (outstanding Sanjeev Shankar) in the latter. M.I.A. is a guest artist in Jump In (Cross the Line), adding a contemporary feel and expression, and Alev Lenz’s touching lyrics and vocals are the pulse of the title song Land of Gold. But the heart of the album is Remain the Sea – featuring heartbreaking poetry of Pavana Reddy, spoken with much feeling (Vanessa Redgrave), and landscaped beautifully with traditional chanting and sitar. In this piece one cannot help but feel the weight of emotion, coupled with responsibility.

The mix of Indian classical styles, electronica, jazz and textured soundscapes, has an admirable fluidity. This album makes a difference – as a social commentary and as a powerful musical creation.

Ice and Longboats: Ancient Music of Scandinavia
Ake & Jens Egevad; Ensemble Marie Balticum
Delphian DCD34181
(delphianrecords.co.uk)

What would the music of the Vikings have sounded like? This CD offers a partial response to this question and more, as it takes the listener on a journey through soundscapes of two periods: music improvised on Viking era (800-1050 AD) instruments, as well as notated songs and instrumental items from the early centuries of Christianity in Scandinavia.

The second volume in Delphian Records’ groundbreaking collaboration with the European Music Archaeology Project, Ice and Longboats showcases the work of the versatile Ensemble Mare Balticum, as well as the remarkable father/son team of Åke and Jens Egevad. The Egevads are musicians and reconstructors of ancient instruments. They built the wooden lurs (trumpets), frame drums, bone flutes, hornpipe, animal horn and Viking lyres heard on this recording.

The selections mostly alternate between instrumental and vocal songs, with occasional dramatic shifts in mood and texture between tracks. The delicate medieval bone recorder is contrasted with the declamatory sounds of the lurs, and the simplicity of the bells provides a foil to the more elaborate medieval vocal and ensemble sections.

Standouts include the lyre duet on In the Village: evening, the Jew’s harp solo (played by Ute Goedecke) on Gaudet mater ecclesia and the sublime vocals on Nobilis humilis. The overall sound is pristine, as the music was recorded in the historic (ca. 1100s) Oppmanna church in Sweden. A beautiful and illuminating recording, Ice and Longboats is a voyage worth taking.

Momentum
Turbo Street Funk
Independent TSFCD002
(turbostreetfunk.com)

My first introduction to Turbo Street Funk was witnessing their live Toronto street corner bouncing performances which made any lengthy wait for public transit a joyous experience. Their busker street spirit is remarkably captured on this, their second release, though now they can also be heard playing lively gigs at festivals, clubs and on air!

The nine tracks feature both original tunes and covers. The original title track Momentum is a big rock concert hall funky anthem with sing-along arm-waving melodies. In contrast, the jazzier original Never Been to New Orleans moves along in blues-based harmonica and sax solos, and fun double-time speedy Cajun-flavoured middle and ending sections true to their street roots. The other originals are good too and indicative of their developing songwriting skills.

Covers are the band’s forte especially in Seven, an unlikely combination of the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army, the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) and yes, Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King. Technical performance precision, precise listening skills and superb individual musicality weave an almost new musical genre highlighted by in-your-face guitar solos and dance-in-your-living-room grooves.

Each Turbo Street Funk band member is an accomplished musician whose youthful artistic essence is captured by the excellent recording production. Infectious musical energy, a driving beat, booming bottom end tuba, wailing solos and boisterous vocals make Momentum a jubilant release.

Ice Age Paradise
Sienna Dahlen
Independent SEN06 (siennadahlen.com)

Dream Cassette
Joel Miller; Sienna Dahlen
Origin Records 82713 (originarts.com)

Sienna Dahlen follows the great line of Canadian vocalists who commit to disc the poetry of music written from the heart. She also reveals that she is a queen of bright timbre and contrasting colours; a lyrical vocalist par excellence. On Ice Age Paradise she plays characters that are elementally flawed and tragic, revealing the raw wounds of their emotions as they rise up in the throat. The performance is a visceral one that flirts dangerously close to music’s nerve endings. Dahlen has in her sights a pure kind of poetry. How beautifully Venezia dances its ghostly waltz here, the flowing speed perfectly judged by conductor Andrew Downing to give the rhythms a lift and allow Dahlen to phrase the poem in unbroken sentences with total naturalness. Throughout, Dahlen is an engaging storyteller who brings to life a narrative almost completely visualized in monochrome. But as surely as night turns to day, voice, piano and bass, horns and cello, guitar and drums open the door to an attractive, songful luminosity that glimmers as if from a rainbow-coloured gossamer web.

On Dream Cassette, Dahlen teams up with an extraordinarily gifted multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Joel Miller who, in each of 12 original songs here, has tempered his arsenal of sophisticated compositional resources with fond and haunting reminiscences reflecting the contours of New Brunswick’s rich and yet starkly dramatic cultural landscape. The mostly unfamiliar tunes serve as unifying devices, which in the hands of Miller and Dahlen, together with a crack ensemble, elevate their intentions through deconstruction in a variety of unexpected ways. Songs such as Flying Dream and Corey Heart are densely evocative and hypnotic musical embroideries while the audacious Streamlined is at once raucous and poignantly eloquent. There is a wonderful kaleidoscopic palette of vocal colours from Miller’s saxophones throughout, with plenty of sonorous bloom for high and lonesome notes. For her part, Dahlen brings an ethereal beauty to this recording, singing gloriously as she rises fluently to the stately melodic lines of Miller’s music.

Emilyn Stam and John David Williams
Emilyn Stam; John David Williams
Independent (emilynandjohn.com)

This self-titled CD is a fetching collection of original tunes by the Toronto-based duo Emilyn Stam (on fiddle and accordion) and John Williams (on clarinet and harmonica). Drawing on their individual and joint experience in a broad range of musical genres, they deftly blur the lines between the traditional/folk and experimental/improv worlds with inventive artistry. Fiddle and clarinet are the predominant colours throughout; these blend remarkably well here – kudos to the engineer for capturing such a great sound from the tricky-to-record clarinet!

Whether in waltzes, jigs, blues or more-outside-the-box tunes – my personal favourites being the Tim-Burton-meets-the-klezmorim Sleepless Waltz and the quizzical Waltz from Hawaii Bar – there’s a whole lot to enjoy here. Stam and Williams play with colourful and expressive nuance, and their enjoyment of what they’re doing is palpable. Much instrumental virtuosity is on display here too but it’s all in good service to the music, and the occasional forays into what some of us might call “extended techniques” just add to the pleasure. Some very hot clarinet playing can be heard in The New Rule, and when Stam switches to accordion halfway through this tune, the blend of the two reed colours is brilliant.

This is creative, witty and beautiful music making, and I hope we all hear a lot more from this duo. I first knew of Emilyn Stam’s playing through her work with the late great Oliver Schroer; as I listen here, I can almost see him beaming in the background.