Song
Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Decca B0036196-02 (deccaclassics.com/en/artists/sheku-kanneh-mason)

Since winning BBC Young Musician in 2017 cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has been much in demand from every musical quarter, traversing a road to glory, the envy of many musicians, some twice – even three times – his age. It is now safe to say that the music world is Kanneh-Mason’s oyster, albeit with room to spare for all his über-gifted siblings.  

But the cellist has – to all intents and purposes – pride of place in music’s rarefied realm. His Shostakovich First Cello Concerto unearthed real depth. From evidence of his various Decca recordings he seems to have soaked up every experience in the glitz and gush of what you might call his formative years. At the time of reviewing Song, with its repertoire culled from the classical and the popular, and from secular and sacred pieces, Kanneh-Mason is set to perform his interpretation of Elgar’s monumental Cello Concerto in E Minor Op.85 – a work long held out of bounds because of Jacqueline du Pré’s iconic 1962 recording – with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. (Unfortunately, that will have taken place by time of publication.)

However, Song amplifies the truth that Kanneh-Mason may have inherited Du Pré’s crown. The freshly radiant interpretation of Beethoven’s Variations on Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen, Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words (both also feature his brilliant pianist-sister, Isata), Stravinsky’s Chanson russe and Bach’s sacred music are spectacular. But Same Boat, a song composed by Kanneh-Mason (with vocalist Zak Abel) is the album’s apogee. In this simple song lies notice of Kanneh-Mason’s glowing compositional genius. 

My America 2: Destinations
Jim Self; Various Artists
Basset Hound Music (bassethoundmusic.com)

Unless you’ve been living in a cave with no access to media for the past 40 years, you have heard the tuba playing of Jim Self. A legendary fixture in Hollywood recording studios, he has performed on countless sessions for film and television and is probably best known for his performance as the “Voice of the Mothership” from Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And all the while, Self has maintained an impressive “live” career in many groups, including the Los Angeles Opera, the Hollywood Bowl Symphony, as a jazz musician and a celebrated tuba soloist.

His latest solo release, My America 2: Destinations (a sequel to My America released 20 years ago) is a jazzy romp through places in the USA that have been important to him throughout his long career. (As the cover states: “We hold these tunes to be SELF-evident.” Cute.) It goes without saying that Self’s solo tuba playing is amazing and his backup band made up of top LA studio musicians is as tight as one would expect, but what makes this album memorable are the arrangements by his longtime friend, Kim Scharnberg. His eclectic, inventive writing, his creative scoring (and, of course, Self’s stellar tuba playing) will have me returning to this disc time and time again.

i’d Love to Turn…
John Oswald
fony (pfony.bandcamp.com/album/id-love-to-turn)

Prolific Canadian composer/performer John Oswald is back with an illustrious, boundary-crashing release, dedicated to Phil Strong. Four main tracks are online streaming, with additional five bonus tracks. videos and main track PDF scores for downloading.

The main four tracks are Oswald’s self-described plunderphonic Rascali Klepitoire/hybrids combining elements from live-performance recordings with studio-based additions and plunderphonic transformations, primarily focused on music he discovered in the mid-1960s. Fee Fie Foe Fum is complex, surprisingly easy listening based on the 1966 pop hit, and Oswald’s research between Frank Zappa’s first album release and Edgard Varèse’s death. Familiar tidbits are superimposed into fragmented short upbeat modern sounds. 

The BBC orchestral commission I’d Love to Turn… quotes The Beatles, Ligeti and Terry Riley. This studio recreation combines orchestral sounds with electronics, creating new music embedded in popular music. 

Oswald quotes from around 40 piano scores in brief fragments, up to four simultaneously, in the Marc-André Hamelin solo piano commission Tip (2022). A calm, classical-flavoured opening leads to chords, flourishes, runs and rhythms. Love the evocative high-pitched ringing sections. 

Varèse, Zappa and 1960s music are featured in reFuse. Oswald’s ear-catching talent to keep a work moving with fragmented interchanging, superimposed live instruments and electronic quotes and effects drive this “name that tune” work. Bonus tracks highlights are live Hamelin rehearsal Tip, and Turning Point Ensemble reFuse performances. Oswald reinvents Ligeti, Zappa and Varèse each separately on three additional tracks.

The more one listens to Oswald’s memorable music here, the more one hears and loves.

Only Elephants Know Her Name
So Long Seven
Independent SLS003 (solongseven.bandcamp.com/releases)

Canadian instrumental quartet So Long Seven – Neil Hendry (guitars), Tim Posgate (banjos), William Lamoureux (violin) and Ravi Naimpally (tabla, dumbek, udu, percussion) – is back with an eight track release featuring their unique flavourful, original compositions and tight performances blending classical, folk, blues, jazz and world traditions from India, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Hendry’s liner notes provide backgrounds to the tracks.

My favourite animals each have a composition here… The title track only elephants know her name was written for a Kenyan elephant with almost ground-touching tusks. Superimposed repeated jazzy and rock-like styles, fun percussion rolls and orchestral strings lead to Posgate’s virtuosic contrasting colour and rhythmic banjo solo. Mara is about an Asian elephant that worked in a circus until 1995 and on retirement moved to a zoo in Argentina and then, during the pandemic, to a sanctuary in Brazil. It features the mesmerizing guest, Hindustani vocalist Samidha Joglekar, singing a haunting folk-like melody, reciting a Ganesh prayer her mother taught her, above a held-note and rhythmic beats backdrop. Now to the hopping Frolic of the Monsoon Frogs, inspired by Naimpally’s Indian childhood post-monsoon memories of puddles full of dancing frogs. Upbeat rock/jazz time-to-party percussion and bass drive the repeated almost atonal shots, instrumental solos including guest strings, background clapping and vocal screams.

Violinist Lamoureux produced the release, and arranged guest string performers’ parts to some tracks like L’unique étoile de la tolérance, a calming soundscape of held-notes washes, closing plucks and his slow violin melodic lines. The closing Ghost Ocean has thoughtful, reflective quartet sounds.

A big welcome to So Long Seven’s great new release!

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Música de las Américas
Miguel Zenón
miel music (miguelzenon.com)

All of the eight elegantly constructed tracks on this inspired project were composed by noted NYC-based alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, who cites the American continent’s fascinating and complex history as his inúspiration (including the near genocide of untold numbers of indigenous peoples that occurred under the boot European colonialism). Zenón has surrounded himself with a superb ensemble, featuring his long-time quartet of Luis Perdomo on piano, Hans Glawischnig on bass and Henry Cole on drums. Special guests include percussionist Paoli Mejias, Victor Emmanuelli on barril de bomba, congero Daniel Diaz and the renowned Puerto Rican ensemble Los Pleneros de La Cresta.

The first track is Tainos y Caribes where bittersweet, percussive, contrapuntal modalities embody the clashing of the peaceful, agrarian Tainos and the conquest-driven Caribes. Exquisite alto work from Zenón stirs the soul and invigorates the emotions – incorporating future bop modalities with ancient rhythmic forms, while the rhythm section manifests the matrix of creativity. Perdomo shines here with a piano solo par excellence. A clear standout is Navegando (Las Estrellas Nos Guían), which evokes the seafaring culture of the Indigenous Carribean peoples, who travelled incomprehensible distances in open canoes, simply by an advanced knowledge of the stars, and the contribution of Los Pleneros de la Cresta take the listener on a viaje encanto. 

The gorgeous closer, Antillano (Indigenous peoples from the Antilles) also features dynamic and visceral congas courtesy of Diaz. This is a CD not to be missed and Zenón is, without question, one of the leading lights of Afro/Latin/jazz fusion. Additionally, this sumptuous project has been dedicated to the memory of the late master musician, and dear friend of Zenón, Héctor “Tito” Matos.

Meu Mundo – My World
Carlos Cardozo
Lula World Records LWR026A (carloscardozo.ca)

Brazilian-Canadian musician Carlos Cardozo has for many years enriched Toronto’s music scene, as he seems to be on every Brazilian music group’s first call list. If there’s a Brazilian music gig, Cardozo will almost surely be there. Now he can add songwriting to his long list of musical accomplishments, alongside singing and playing cavaquinho, guitar and percussion. Dozens of his musical compatriots, both in Brazil and Toronto, have added their talents to this album either through co-songwriting (in particular Elias Barros), arranging or playing on the tracks. Credit for much of the beautiful production and several of the arrangements goes to the uber talented guitarist, André Valério. 

While those of us who aren’t fluent in Portuguese won’t be able to fully understand the lyrics, we can still easily appreciate the sentiment and the exceptional musicality of Meu Mundo. The first track Amor ao meu Sertão, a gorgeous tribute to a region in the northeast of Brazil, sets the tone for the album, which is in large part a love letter to Cardozo’s homeland. From the gentle samba and dreamy strings of Beija-flor da Fumaça (loosely, about a hummingbird) to Forró de Pernambuco (forró is a genre of traditional music from the northeast) or Uma volta na Veneza brasileira (a funky 70s-style tribute to Recife, known as the Brazilian Venice), Meu Mundo takes us on a musically rich and heartfelt journey and we are the better for it. Find the album and videos on Cardozo’s website.

I Left My Lamp
Jacqueline Schwab
Sono Luminus DSL-92257 (sonoluminus.com)

American pianist Jacqueline Schwab is renowned for her musicianship in many Ken Burns documentaries including The Civil War, Baseball and Benjamin Franklin. Here, she performs a collection of her solo piano arrangements of 19 traditional decades-spanning classic songs associated with American immigrants from many cultures 

Schwab’s respectful, well-thought-out arrangements and performances are simultaneously true to the original song form while incorporating her unique artistic vision. The opening track, the air For Ireland I’d Not Tell Her Name is a free flowing, sensitive musical performance which is followed directly by the upbeat, high-pitched melodic jig, The Blarney Pilgrim. Schwab amazingly sets three Scottish fiddle tunes successfully to piano, like the second reel Miss Dumbreck being held together by low-pitched left-hand accompaniment. Her straightforward, harmonic, “very classical” playing of Sibelius’ Finlandia Hymn is coupled with the Swedish waltz Vals efter Soling Anders with its free time and singalong quality. The well-known habanera La Paloma is played surprisingly, successfully slower than usual, featuring full melodic right hand. There is a moving darker improvisational feel to Schwab’s blues-flavoured rendition of the spiritual Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child. Other tracks feature music from Brazil, Bulgaria, Italy and more.

Schwab “travels the musical immigrant America” in her intelligent, clear, balanced piano performances and arrangements, complemented with clear production sound quality and Stephanie Smith’s detailed informative liner notes. This is a fabulous cross-section of American immigrant music.

The Equation of Time
Charke-Cormier Duo with Celso Machado
Leaf Music LM260 (leaf-music.ca)

Featuring Derek Charke on flute and bass flute and Eugene Cormier on guitar, this CD takes its title from Charke’s composition The Equation of Time, which occupies the last four tracks and refers to the fact that it is composed of an equal number of fast and slow sections. Arguably, however, the CD might better have been called The Equations of Time, not only because of tempos, but also because the compositions found on it were written in four different centuries, and the two older compositions include contemporary additions and variations seamlessly incorporated by the composer-performers themselves. This in itself adds yet another temporal dimension, the composer-performer, a rarity in our day, but typical earlier in the life of western music.

Added to all this are percussionist Celso Machado’s contributions, six pieces of Brazilian dance music, adding a musical sensibility at least as remote from contemporary Canadian music making as the much older compositions on the disc by Frescobaldi (17th century) and Wilhelmine von Bayreuth (18th century). The result is a strange and intriguing series of juxtapositions of new and old, familiar and unfamiliar, expected and unexpected musical experiences, a sort of musical surrealism, evocative of the artistic ferment of the second and third decades of 20th-century Europe, but with a vitality coming from real artistic expression and not imitation. I should add as well that the performances are infused with an equal vitality and artistry.

Charke, Cormier and Machado have reinvented the CD as a work of art in itself, more than just a concert program frozen in time.

Listen to 'The Equation of Time' Now in the Listening Room

Remember the Audio
Monkey House
Alma Records ACD62422 (almarecords.com)

Thirty years is a long time for a band to be together and it’s an even longer time to keep coming up with fresh, inventive songs. But Don Breithaupt, the songwriter, keyboardist, lead singer, producer and all-around driving force behind Monkey House, has done it again. As with their five previous releases, Remember the Audio hits the sweet spot between familiar and fresh and sophisticated and accessible. 

For those unfamiliar with the band, Breithaupt has been up front about his love for and emulation of Steely Dan’s sound. And this latest work has that same super tight pop/rock/jazz feel (courtesy of core members Justin Abedin, guitar, Mark Kelso, drums, Pat Kilbride, bass and Lucy Woodward, backing vocals) that SD did so well, while also being very original. 

Every one of the 11 tracks is strong and very Monkey House but each has its own charms, too. The title track is a catchy homage to the powerful nostalgia of the music of one’s youth; Skin in the Game has some funky New Orleans nuances (and NOLA resident, Chris Butcher, guesting on trombone); and the beautiful, bittersweet ballad, New York Owes You Nothing, haunts. 

Breithaupt explained that although most of the music was written pre-pandemic, some of the lyrics were written during the first dark months of lockdown, so there’s an understandable sense of foreboding to some of the songs, in particular the punchy opener, The Future Is Almost Gone and The Last Days of Pompeii (“Will the last one out of L.A. kill the light”). The closing track wraps things up fittingly: Mose Allison’s Ever Since the World Ended, although penned in 1987, could have been written last week the way it wittily evokes our current times.

Listen to 'Remember the Audio' Now in the Listening Room

Day in the Sun
Mikkel Ploug
Songlines SGL1635-2 (songlines.com)

The Danish guitarist Mikkel Ploug recorded this collection of 14 pieces for solo acoustic guitar last December. I loved every track on this album: introspective, inventive, tasteful and positive. If you enjoy playlists like “Acoustic Guitar Chill” but you wish the tracks were just a bit more intellectually satisfying, this album is for you. 

The style is, as Ploug himself says, genreless: it sits somewhere near the intersection of jazz, folk, minimalism and classical. In fact, one of the pieces is Ploug’s take on a nocturne by the contemporary Danish composer Bent Sørensen. The playing is nuanced and heartfelt and I’m happy to say the producers kept things real by not trying to cover up the sounds of finger slides and the occasional twang. 

Most of the tracks are recorded on Ploug’s steel string guitar but on two of them he uses a flamenco guitar with gut strings: gorgeous. The title is perfect; this album feels like a sunny day spent with a good friend.

El Violín Dorado, El Violín Arabe
Pablo Picco’s Bardo Todol
Full Spectrum Records (fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com)

Sound exploration is at the core of the ongoing Bardo Todol project by Argentinian composer and sound artist Pablo Picco. Bypassing linearity and direction in favour of capturing what is heard in each moment, Picco creates a wonderful sense of immediacy that is not urgent but encompassing, and spontaneity that is raw and unfiltered. 

El Violín Dorado, El Violín Arabe is the recent addition to this experimental series of ongoing recordings; it focuses on the subject and implementation of desert as a soundscape. Picco centers his compositions around field recordings, which he acquires on daily walks with his children. The simple instruments they play on the walks then become a part of the big organic sound and that sound is further manipulated digitally. Improvisation is an essential part of this process and adds to the unique expressiveness of the overall sound. Silence between the main blocks of sound then becomes a thread that connects them into the sonic story.

El Violín Dorado, El Violín Arabe (The Golden Violin, The Arab Violin) focuses on distorted violin, other string instruments, drums, Arabic devotional music and grainy vinyl textures. Both soundscapes have an element of bleakness and distortion. The sound morphs constantly, through a clever use of spatiality as well as through what is not heard. The noise is intercepted and transmitted throughout, allowing us to hear both concrete and imaginative projections of what the desert is. Inventive, immediate, this gem requires active listening.

Note: this release is a limited edition cassette or high quality digital download via select online retailers.

La Voz Del Mar
Xiomara Torres
Patois Records PRCD028 (xiomaratorres.com)

The African Diaspora transported a variety of seminal musics and rhythmic forms to the Americas, which have also contributed heartily to North American blues and jazz. This luminous project (translated as The Voice of the Sea) honours the Afro-Colombian musical tradition, and was deftly produced by San Francisco-based vibraphonist Dan Neville and Colombian vocalist Xiomara Torres. All of the consummate arrangements were created by Neville, and the recording itself was done entirely in Cali, Colombia. In his profound collaboration with vocalist Torres, this CD stands as a living tribute to Torres’ esteemed uncle, master marimbist and international “Music de Pacifica”/Afro-Colombian icon, maestro Diego Obregon.

Torres lovingly embraces her traditional roots here, while travelling seamlessly through a number of contemporary Latin motifs. First up is Me Quedo Contigo. Torres’ timbre is soft and sensual here, and her vocals are also pitch perfect, vibrant and filled with emotional gravitas. Neville has insured that she is never overwhelmed by the potent and complex rumba Guaguancó arrangement, which is rife with horns, vibes/marimba and incendiary percussion. 

Tarde Lo Conoci is a totally delightful Vallenato – a musical form that one could easily hear in the barrios of Cali, Colombia or Queens, NY – featuring accordionist Miguel Salazar, while Tio is a family affair, written by Diego Obregon and featuring his son David on bass and daughter Michel on chorus vocals. The lively tune begins as a currulao and segues seamlessly into a Colombian rumba. Irresistible stand-outs also include La Puerta, a romantic and ethereal bolero (ballad) and the spinetingling closer – the traditional Filomena – a surprising jazz/Pacific Coast Music fusion featuring the iconic Nidia Góngora and muy hermosa marimba work by Neville.

Unánime
Roxana Amed
Sony Music Latin 19658748082 (roxana-amed.com)

This inspired, gorgeous, relevant project from multi-Grammy nominee Roxana Amed is a joyous celebration of the works of both contemporary and historic Latin-American composers, as well as Miles Davis, Edward Perez and Martin Bejerano. 

Amed views “Latin” as a very open concept, as well as the unifying geno connection that the title implies, and she has made this concept of unity the focus of a stirring and deeply magical recording. The Argentinian emigre has surrounded herself with some of the most exceptional Latin musicians on the planet, including her long-time collaborators, Cuban/American pianist and arranger Bejerano, bassist Perez and drummer Ludwig Afonso.

First up is a re-envisioning of Miles Davis’ Flamenco Sketches in which Amed’s sultry and evocative tones wrap themselves around the listener in waves of warm, horn-like sonic joy. The emotionally moving arrangement manifests a sacred vibration and Niño Josele’s viscous soloing on acoustic guitar speaks to us at the very molecular level. Brazil’s legendary Egberto Gismonti is feted here with a potent version of his composition Agua y Vino. The dusky tones of Amed’s sumptuous voice weave a haunting web, while Chico Pinheiro’s guitar transports us to another realm. Of special note is Los Tres Golpes, a song from Cuban icon Ignacio Cervantes featuring the volcanic Chucho Valdés on piano. The deeply moving closer, Adios a Cuba, is another beloved Cervantes composition, rendered to perfection with the angelic collaboration of Amed and Valdés. 

NETSA
Minyeshu
mcps EUCD2945 (arcmusic.co.uk)

The path stubbornly antithetical to globalism is often littered with civilizations that remain almost supernaturally mysterious. One such civilization and culture is the land of Ras-Tafari and, double-entendre, an amusing example the latter ensconced in a sign at Addis Ababa airport that says: “Welcome to Ethiopia, Centre of Active Recreation and Relaxation.” A scrunched-up brow, no matter how deep the furrows, provides no respite. Neither might the repertoire on Netsa by the eminent effervescent vocalist, Minyeshu Kifle Tedla. 

The great Bill Laswell – in typically Homeric manner – first approached Ethiopia through what he famously described as “cultural collision”. It was Laswell who enabled us to peer – magically, through a glass darkly – into the ontological works of Hakim Bey, the Moroccan sojourns of Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin. Laswell’s cultural collisions also presented the ancient-future of the ineffably brilliant Ejigayehu Shibabaw – and with her mystical music the washint and the kirar (ancient Ethiopian flute and harp respectively), the latter of which was believed to be played by King David when he composed the Psalms. 

Minyeshu, to her enormous credit, has brought the ancient-future of Ethiopian music – indeed Ethiopian culture – to a kind of wonderful artistic maturity. Her majestic vocal ululations propel, with irresistible kinetic energy, music redolent of colourful tone textures and transcendent rhythms to conjure a kind of musical magisterium formed – as it were – out of the vivid red clay of the land of Ras-Tafari. Maddening seduction is imminent.

Cat’s Cradle
Arnab Chakrabarty
Independent (arnabchakrabarty.bandcamp.com/releases)

Musicians from around the globe have chosen to make Toronto home ever since the days it was colloquially tagged for hogs and muddy streets. Virtuoso sarod player Arnab Chakrabarty, a representative of the venerable Hindustani raga classical music tradition, is a relatively recent and welcome addition to the ranks of Toronto-area music professionals.  

No novice, over the last two decades Chakrabarty has played hundreds of concerts on stages around the world. Indian newspaper The Hindu reported that Chakrabarty is “known both for his emotive virtuosity and cerebral approach,” believing not in “simplifying music to cater to popular tastes as much as revelling in ‘manipulating the operative rules of the ragas to create interesting expressions.’” 

Chakrabarty aims to make classical raga performance accessible to today’s audiences without compromising its fundamentals. And his third full-length album Cat’s Cradle, featuring sarod renderings of five classical ragas, reflects this balanced approach. Eschewing flamboyant ornamental passagework, he rather focuses on the core values of the raga at hand which come to life in the alap, the introductory melodic improvisation.

The gat, a melody set in a specific raga and tala (time cycle) the latter rendered on the tabla, follows. On this album the gats are Chakrabarty’s compositions. They in turn inspire improvisation, the outcome of a spirited dialogue between set rules and the musician’s imagination freed up.

Cat’s Cradle gives full scope to Chakrabarty’s in-depth understanding and imaginative exploration of each raga complex, plumbing their signature phrases and emotional tenor while never losing sight of the rich Hindustani traditions of raga performance practice.