Walter Braunfels: Don Juan; Symphonic Variations on an Old French Nursery Song
Altenburg-Gera Philharmonic Orchestra; Markus L. Frank
Capriccio CD C5250

Copland – Orchestral Works I: Ballets
BBC Philharmonic; John Wilson
Chandos CHSA 5164

In 1979, I interviewed Aaron Copland and asked him how he, a boy from Brooklyn (like myself), developed such a feel for Western and rural America. “That’s not so odd,” he answered. “There’s a whole legendary feeling about the West. I think any young American, wherever he might live, would have some sort of feel about the wide open spaces. Beyond that, it’s just a feat of the imagination.”

Copland’s imagined wide-open spaces are front-and-centre in this CD’s three ballet suites. The cowboy ballets Billy the Kid (Billy – another Brooklynite!) and Rodeo receive atmospheric, colourful readings with emphasized percussion. (The booklet notes identify Rodeo choreographer Agnes de Mille as Cecil B.’s daughter; she was his niece.) In Appalachian Spring, conductor Wilson underlines “the spaces between the notes,” building a grand climax on the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts.

The CD opens with an unusually slow and sombre Fanfare for the Common Man, followed by Wilson’s less-than-raucous treatment of El Salón México, Copland’s musical postcard from a Mexican dancehall. (Though not intended for the stage, it has occasionally been choreographed.)

Aided by brilliant recorded sound, Wilson’s measured approach adds uncommon depth and dignity to these works, often tossed off as pops repertoire. The Roman numeral “I” on the cover indicates more Copland CDs are planned. Here’s hoping the unjustly neglected film scores will finally get the comprehensive coverage they deserve. In any event, the series is off to a promising start.

Intersystems
Intersystems
Alga Marghen Number One (forcedexposure.com)

Intersystems’ outer limits musique concrète began as the soundtrack to the suitably named “Mind Excursion” event at the University of Toronto in 1967. This immersive environment filled ten rooms with sights, sounds and smells for a sensory overloading psychedelic experience.

The team behind this “electrosonic presentation” was sculptor Michael Hayden, architect Dick Zander, electronic composer John Mills-Cockell and poet Blake Parker. Over the next two years, Intersystems masterminded a series of similarly mind-massaging installations along with three albums, now lovingly enshrined in this lavish box set from Italy’s Alga Marghen.

The reproduced sleeve of 1967’s Intersystems Number One credits Mills-Cockell’s “musical visitations” and Parker’s “chaste mouthings,” as introduced on the immortal Orange Juice & Velvet Underwear. Scraping strings and hypnotic drones propel Parker’s deadpan conjuring of “gentle boys,” “smells of oranges” and “marmalade on velvet.” As Nick Storring offers in his essay, “it may be the most typically capital-p Psychedelic cut of their entire catalog,” but simply sets the scene for what’s to come.

Parker’s blending of the sensual with the surreal and the banal never quite becomes clear in the shimmering subaquatics of Intersystems’ debut. Sonic equivalents of his Burroughsian cut-ups are John Cale’s The Gift, Throbbing Gristle’s Hamburger Lady or the foghorn oration in an ocean of din from Bill Exley of the Nihilist Spasm Band (later signed to Intersystems’ label Allied Records on Hayden’s suggestion.) Parker’s poetry is far more kitchen sink, yet its power is felt subliminally, changing the temperature in any room where it’s played.

As Mills-Cockell explains in his essay, a device called “The Coffin” created the ominous acousmatics of Intersystems Number One. This satin-lined box was the resting place for piano wire, tuning pegs and contact mics to switch between ghostly samples like a radio station from beyond. By 1968’s Peachy, he had become one of Canada’s earliest owners of a Moog Mark II synthesizer, voyaging even further out.

Peachy opener Experienced Not Watched is comparable to the prog fantasias of Mills-Cockell’s later project Syrinx, but proves to be another fakeout. Intersystems’ masterpiece flows through a jump-cut collage of sputtering sound effects, orchestral swells and Parker’s disembodied Dalek buzzing. Their final album, Free Psychedelic Poster Inside, amps up the agitation with lobe-slicing sine waves and seasick stereo pans, alongside the story of a “plastic” couple on the brink.

Emerging from this spawning pool, Mills-Cockell’s Moog would be employed by the likes of Kensington Market, Bruce Cockburn and Anne Murray. He would see brighter lights, but these avant-garde origins deserve a flashback. Nearly 50 years later, the remastered LPs are packaged with 132 densely packed pages of images and essays, finally giving listeners the chance to lucidly experience Intersystems’ mind excursions in the mind’s eye.

Ana Sokolović – Folklore Imaginaire
Ensemble Transmission
Naxos 8.573304

Higgs Ocean – Music for Gamelan and String Quartet
Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan; Quatuor Bozzini
Artifact Music ART-042 (evergreenclubgamelan.ca)

Toronto’s Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan has just released a superb CD entitled Higgs Ocean that features five works for the ECCG performing on their unique Indonesian-based bronze and wood instruments in counterpoint with the sounds of the Quatuor Bozzini string quartet – a daring combination of soundworlds, cultures, tunings and timbres. Since their beginnings in 1983, the ECCG have been steadily building a repertoire of works through the commissioning of Canadian and international composers. This CD is no exception with five commissioned works composed by Canadians.

The first, In the High Branches by Linda Catlin Smith, tackles head-on the fundamental challenge in pairing the two groups of instruments. Smith calls it an “oil and water situation.” Her solution was to allow both ensembles to have their own distinctive space to establish their identities. Gradually one hears these two worlds merging in such a way that they blend seamlessly.

Smith’s work sets the stage for the remaining pieces, each of which handle this challenge in different ways whether that be through the use of repeating rhythmic patterns and melodic motives, such as in Michael Oesterle’s Higgs Ocean and Ana Sokolović’s In Between or the more starkly pointillist style in Spe Salvi by Petar-Kresimir Klanac. One distinctive feature in Sokolović’s piece is the use of glissandi on the flute-like suling that swoop and soar around the string and gong-like textures. Overall, the CD displays a sense of surety and conviction in its exploration and blending of two cultural legacies.

Amorisms – Music of Paul Moravec
Portara Ensemble; ALIAS Chamber Ensemble
Delos DE 3470

The word amorism is defined as the state of someone who is preoccupied with love and lovemaking or with writing about love. Certainly the case with the Elizabethans; Shakespeare was surely the most prolific in this regard. Composer Paul Moravec joked that “William Shakespeare is a sort of silent partner who has been very good to me over the years.” Two of the three works on this recording, Amorisms and Tempest Fantasy, are based on the Bard’s works. In writing Amorisms, which was jointly commissioned by ALIAS Chamber Ensemble, vocal ensemble Portara and the Nashville Ballet, Moravec speaks of the challenges of writing engaging music for both, whilst not detracting from the dance performance. The resultant music, with recurring, carefully pruned texts, provides a gorgeous and evocative palette to enhance the stage performance.

The second work on the album, Tempest Fantasy, earned the composer a Pulitzer Prize in 2004. Scored for violin, cello, clarinet and piano, each of the first three movements evokes one of the play’s characters: the sprightly Ariel, the mystic Prospero and the earthy Caliban. A fourth movement portrays the island soundscapes and the finale a challenging flight of fancy only for the most adept of players; ALIAS certainly rises to the task.

The outstanding Portara vocal ensemble joins the instrumentalists again for the third work on the recording, Sacred Love Songs, settings of biblical texts as well as the Prayer of St. Francis, with an instrumental interlude as the penultimate movement.

Hand Eye
Eighth Blackbird
Cedille CDR 90000 162

Hot off their fourth Grammy Award win (2016 Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance for Filament) Eighth Blackbird’s latest record Hand Eye might be better described as a natural phenomenon – an autonomous, multimedia collage which seems to have arisen inevitably from the storm of information whirling in a data-saturated world.

For this project, Eighth Blackbird, all Oberlin alumni, collaborated with the composer supergroup Sleeping Giant, all Yale alumni. The two groups are made up of six members each, a handsome symmetry which is artfully exploited here: for each piece, one composer paired up with one performer to develop a work centering around that performer’s particular instrument. This is just one of Hand Eye’s organizational layers, however. In another, the composers take inspiration from works of art in the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art collection; in yet another the six pieces form one continuous narrative with a motivic continuity that is perceptible on the first listen.

As such, Hand Eye is meant to be taken in all at once – but there are certainly standout works. By-By Huey (by Ted Hearne) marshals bass clarinet wails, Ligeti-esque muted piano ostinati and a solo jazz piano pastiche into something not only internally coherent, but coherent with the works which surround it as well. Checkered Shade (Timo Andres), which owes much to David Lang, is inspired by a fractal drawing, and feels like the musical equivalent of scrolling out on a satellite map of earth until only a dot remains. In Hand Eye, Eighth Blackbird strides over the boundary between inspiration and art.

Far & Near
Brenda Lewis
Independent BL-00220 (brendalewis.ca)

With her second jazz-inspired CD release (and fifth as a leader), rich and sonorous vocalist Brenda Lewis has presented an exceptional and intriguing recording. Co-produced by Lewis and longtime collaborator, guitarist/keyboardist Margaret Stowe, she has created a compellingly stripped-down performance and recording unit, which harkens back not only to Neolithic and contemporary jazz, but also embraces timeless roots, blues, gospel and Afrocentric folk musics. All of the arrangements here involve a Spartan but potent instrumentation of voice, electric guitar, keyboards and the contributions of multi-instrumentalist Jeff Bird on harmonica, mandolin, bass and percussion.

Lewis fires her opening salvo with an appealing and no-nonsense take on Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans (featuring Bird on a soulful harmonica solo). Her adept jazz sensibility (as well as her variegated alto voice) is beautifully displayed on the classic jazz standard A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. Lewis wisely includes a tip of the hat to her folk-ish/Western swing roots with the old warhorse, Cow Cow Boogie (which also features hearty solos from Bird and Stowe). Of special note is the jaunty He Surprises Me and the lovely I Wave Bye-Bye, in which Lewis evokes an almost Celtic aura of heartbreak and longing.

Very few vocalists would have the courage to present themselves in such an exposing, bare-bones way, but Lewis is refreshingly fearless, committed and transparent in her approach and taste; her consummate vocal skill shines throughout.

Life Lessons
Avery Raquel
Independent (averyraquel.com)

Fourteen-year-old jazz vocalist Avery Raquel is a delightful breath of fresh air and already an international success, having appeared at key festivals and venues. On her debut CD, she serves up a tasty collection of jazzified material that includes compositions from such diverse artists as Harold Arlen, Stevie Wonder, Johnny Mercer and Sting. Raquel’s voice is a diaphanous thing, ripe with jejune optimism as well as an effortless, innate understanding of vocal jazz. She is joined here by her skilled trio of producer/arranger Rob Fekete on piano, Mike Pelletier on bass and Joel Haynes on drums.

Kicking off the disc is a swinging take on Arlen and Mercer’s Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive. Raquel’s jazz chops are clearly evident, and her superb trio has an opportunity to stretch out in this fine arrangement. Also of note is Raquel’s take on the popular standard, Que Sera Sera, which was made famous by Doris Day in the film The Man Who Knew Too Much and is rendered here in a bluesy context that seems a very comfortable fit for Raquel.

The funky Wonder hit, Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing is a delight and utilizes Raquel’s natural, unpretentious, soulful feel. Other highlights include a rhythmic, Latin-infused arrangement of Sting’s Fragile, and although of tender years, Raquel’s emotional maturity and meaningful interpretation of this haunting ballad can’t help but resonate with the listener. A stunner is Arlen’s anthem of hope and longing, Over the Rainbow. A pristine a cappella intro is followed by a lyrical and uncluttered vocal interpretation that is both touching and musically eloquent.

Saga Thirteen
Pram Trio
Independent (pramtrio.com)

Pram Trio’s Saga Thirteen offers a refreshing and contemporary take on the time-honoured piano trio format. The album’s six tunes share a penchant for rhythmic adventure and a fluid approach to the line between composition and improvisation. This is unabashedly tonal music that isn’t afraid to be tuneful or leave space for the listener to enter. The playing and writing have a strong conversational element and, while the virtuosity of the group’s members is evident, the overall impression is of a distinct and identifiable group sound.

Bassist Mark Godfrey’s April opens the record with a compelling two-chord vamp supporting a deceptively simple melody. The trio’s sense of dynamics and interplay are clearly the work of three equal voices and pianist Jack Bodkin’s solo, displaying a remarkable range of materials, emerges from the mix in an organic fashion. Bucket List, also by Godfrey, begins with a rootsy bass intro leading to a folk-like melody that proceeds to take some surprising turns. Bodkin’s Mrs. Kim Visits the Living Room Alone juxtaposes an intriguing piano figure over Eric West’s rocking drum groove. March rhythms compound time signatures and contrasting sections unite to form this compact, through-composed piece. Control, another Bodkin composition, continues the through-composed theme with an exercise in space and brevity, aided by West’s open, transparent style. Godfrey’s Treptower Park returns to more familiar jazz terrain with exciting and inventive playing from the whole band. Bodkin’s piano solo in particular is a marvel of colour and variety.

Starer
Nick Fraser
Independent (nickfraserthedrummer.com)

Nick Fraser is an indispensable part of the Toronto jazz scene, a highly skilled, imaginative drummer whose broad swath distinguishes groups from fusion (Peripheral Vision), free jazz (Drumheller) and electro-acoustic improvisation (Lina Allemano’s Kiss the Brain) as well as the jazz mainstream. He’s recently emerged as a significant bandleader. This is the second CD (also available as an LP) by his quartet, and the music is distinguished by both its personnel and Fraser’s approach to composition, developing a distinct group language for the quartet.

The band combines cellist Andrew Downing and bassist Rob Clutton (functioning as a string section as well as in more traditional roles) with saxophonist Tony Malaby, a titan of current free jazz. Fraser’s compositions, often titled Sketch with a number following, are literally that, brief devices or figures to be elaborated in improvisation. Their character and usefulness is apparent from the opening minimalism/ 416-538-7149 in which Downing and Clutton establish a tense polyrhythmic field to which each musician gradually contributes. Sketch #29 begins as an elegiac ballad, bowed by Downing and Clutton in advance of Malaby’s entry; Jupiter (Sketch #15) develops complex, abstract, intersecting lines between cello and soprano.

On one occasion Fraser’s sketches come as a pair, maximizing contrast in a single piece: in its initial segment, Sketch #20/22 includes a playful pointillist dialogue between cello and drums; the concluding phase presents the tenor saxophone as high-speed drill, Malaby finding a level of intensity few can reach. The concluding Sketch #21 provides a tranquil contrast with Malaby on soprano, exploring not only its usual piquant flavour and subtle multiphonics, but initially pressing the instrument towards a flute-like sonority.

Gestes
GGRIL
Tour de Bras TDB CD 90015
(tourdebras.com)

GGRIL is an acronym for the Grand Groupe Régional d’Improvisation Libérée, a 12-member ensemble led by bassist Eric Normand that’s devoted to collective improvisation and conduction, or conducted improvisation. Based in the unlikely hamlet of Rimouski, Quebec, the group has nonetheless managed to collaborate with international soloists and recently completed a European tour. Gestes marks their continuing development, a program of five improvisations and a piece by percussionist Danielle P. Roger.

Perhaps it’s the relative isolation from musicians of similarly radical orientation, but GGRIL has developed a very high level of sustained interaction, evident here in continuously controlled work in which both individual and group invention are in sharp focus. The group’s odd mix of instruments – brass, reeds, accordion and a collection of guitars, strings and percussion – creates striking contrasts, while the musicians’ heterodox backgrounds have them drawing simultaneously on elements of classical, jazz, folk, and industrial music. Les gestes permettent… moves through distinct texture and moods, first featuring the warmly plaintive trombone of Gabriel Rochette, then shifting to a passage of Webern-esque spikiness from violinist Raphaël Arsenault that’s set against the sustained tones of low-pitched reeds. That passing invocation of high modernism gives way to random snare rattles and feedback guitars.

Other dimensions of the group’s resources are evident in the verbi-vocal explosions of De nombreux humain…, the dissonant brass blasts of Les signes… and the sustained machine rhythms of Mais au delà de montrer… as GGRIL continues to find ways to challenge themselves and audiences alike to take that next step.

Live at the Tranzac Vol.1
Ken Aldcroft; William Parker
Trio Records TRP-D504-023
kenaldcroft.com/triorecords.asp

It is always curious to hear about musicians moving to Toronto where the establishments supporting creative music are few and far between, especially if these musicians relocate from Vancouver or Montreal. But who’s complaining? I am at great risk of losing an arm and a leg for suggesting better the Vancouver-born Ken Aldcroft than a hockey player from the U.S. for the Maple Leafs. However, when you hear his 2016 recording with bassist William Parker it all becomes eminently clear. Both men have reputations for being key 21st-century innovators. Parker and Aldcroft worship at the altar of creativity and if you needed more reasons to appreciate those facts, they are all on this remarkable album, Live at the Tranzac Vol.1.

There is never a dull moment on this long piece, simply entitled Set 1. Ideas abound and the music virtually bustles with energetic rhythm and vigorous figurations with no hint of ever coming to an end. The music weaves in and out of melodic phrases and features ever arresting improvisation that challenges even the instrument’s timbral colour. This is a dazzling performance – with Parker also featured on the Japanese shakuhachi and the West African donso ngoni – and when imbued with the intensity and imagination of Aldcroft and Parker the music emerges with a constant stream of new colours, emotions and effects. Moreover, both musicians are supreme masters of musical invention, as this recording triumphantly demonstrates.

Utilities
See Through 5
All-Set AS001

Transcombobulation
Mike Smith; Jonathan Adjemian
All-Set AS003

Never Get Lost for Long
Ali Berkok
All-Set AS002 (all-set.org)

The experimental music scene in Toronto is bustling. It had all but been written off with the virtual retirement of Bill Smith, who, almost single-handedly, brought in musicians such as trombonist George Lewis, the great Anthony Braxton, bassist Dave Holland and many others. Together with the late John Norris, Smith put a lot of the 60s avant-garde on the Sackville label. With Smith in hermitage and the death of John Norris, the centre of this daring music seemed to shift to Guelph, Ontario, where the annual festival seemed to be the only event that showcased the new music. But the Greater Toronto Area appears to have awoken again and the latest manifestation of this is a new imprint called All-Set! (all-set.org). This enterprise founded by bassist Mike Smith has exploded out of the blocks with three discs featuring bold new music where conventional instruments have been leavened with electronica.

Some people’s reaction on hearing the synths and loops of See Through 5 on Utilities might be “this is not a jazz album.” But Mike Smith, pianist Tania Gill, bassist Pete Johnston, reeds and woodwinds specialist Karen Ng and percussion colourist Jake Oelrichs may confound yet please critics. But then the virtuoso musicians seem to have cut the improvised to the bone and turned it into tracks with tunes or at least music with irresistible hooks. To complement the crisp clarity of the electronics, See Through 5 have sown carefully constructed pieces with sections of Ng’s magisterial saxophone and clarinet improvisations. As a studio production it works beautifully.

Once you get past the almost unpronounceable title of this recording, Transcombobulation by Mike Smith and Jonathan Adjemian, you truly enjoy its exploratory music. This is a six-part musical adventure that abounds in variety, depth and invention. Smith is among the foremost of the talented Toronto musicians who has developed an individualistic, difficult-to-classify personal genre. On this riveting disc, Smith and Adjemian imaginatively and (by-and-large) subtly mix in elements of electronic music, rock and contemporary composition with an occasional nod to noise music. Although the pieces develop from beguiling, elegant melodies, what makes them special are Smith and Adjemian’s arresting textures and colours.

Ali Berkok’s Never Get Lost For Long is one of the most adventurous recordings by a Canadian in a considerable length of time. Angular, with a proverbial doffing of the hat towards minimalism, Berkok’s playing is exhilarating, extroverted and virtuosic. Simple as it seems it actually presents rather formidable technical challenges, all of which are surmounted almost with nonchalance. Berkok has a particularly rewarding sense of rhythm, high-sprung, light and incisive, and entirely secure. John Coltrane’s Giant Steps is particularly brilliant, also played with no-holds-barred intuition.

Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground
Noah Preminger
Independent (noahpreminger.com)

Last year New York tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger released Pivot: Live at the 55 Bar, leading his quartet in two half-hour improvisations based on themes from the 1930s blues master Booker “Bukka” White. Now there’s a studio follow-up deep in the same vein, with concentrated instrumental treatments of nine songs by White, Blind Willie Johnson, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson and other country blues and gospel singers who recorded in the late 20s and early 30s. Preminger’s group conception is rooted in the early 60s work of Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins (particularly their bands with Don Cherry), employing that highly conversational, free jazz style and its raw, vocalic emphasis as a conduit to the emotional wellsprings of early blues.

White’s I Am the Heavenly Way has the band in celebratory flight, from the bouncing theme statement and sprung rhythms generated by bassist Kim Cass and expatriate Vancouver drummer Ian Froman to Preminger’s charging solo and trumpeter Jason Palmer’s rapid-fire, splintering lines. Jefferson’s Black Snake Moan has elements of a New Orleans parade band, while Robert Johnson’s mournful Love in Vain is reduced to an ever-resolving melodic fragment, at once litany and cry.

It’s music filled with a subtle light as Preminger and company seek the emotional and spiritual heart of jazz through the grain of its primal melodic figures, journeying into the past to achieve a rare presence.