OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES – Fine Old Recording Re-released
By Bruce Surtees

Hungarian violinist Johanna Martzy (1924-1979) had a unique, pure and tender, quasi angelic tone. Now an icon and cult figure and even though she recorded for major labels including EMI and DG, her records are in such demand that it is not unusual that her LPs at ‘second hand’ specialists are priced in the thousands of dollars. In the last 20-30 years there have been extensive efforts to locate her live broadcasts and each such find is welcomed as a treasure by collectors. One British label was for many years devoted exclusively to Martzy broadcasts. A new DOREMI CD (DHR-778) has the Beethoven Concerto which she did not record commercially and appears here for the very first time as does the Mozart sonata in B flat major, K454. Her performances are striking, at the same time disarmingly exquisite, unforced without Romantic excess. The ease and purity of her playing is different from and unmatched by her peers. In the concerto she is supported by Otmar Nussio and the Radio Svizzera Italiano Orchestra live from 1954 and by Jean Antonietti in the Mozart live from Berlin in 1955. In clear sound, this is a treasure indeed.

Gustav Mahler: The Complete Edition (DG 47788256, 18 CDs) contains every published note; the symphonies and song cycles, plus the Klavierquartettsatz from 1876. Rather than offering the symphonies by one conductor in one of the many complete cycles from the DG, Decca, and Philips, Alan Newcombe, the editor of this edition selected 10 different conductors in performances that best served the composer. Most of us will have preferred versions, but each of the performances selected here has solid strengths. I had lost sight of what a marvellous Mahler conductor Raphael Kubelik was but his performance of the First with The Bavarian Rundfunks is both lyrical and dynamic. Mehta with the Vienna Philharmonic take the Second with Ileana Cotrubas and Christa Ludwig. Haitink’s 1966 recording of the Third with the Concertgebouw and Maureen Forrester remains, for many, a performance of choice. The sensitivity of the Boulez Fourth from Cleveland was unexpected while Bernstein’s Vienna Fifth has not lost its impact. The Sixth with Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic from 2006 may be considered definitive. The Seventh is from 1994 with Sinopoli and The Philharmonia and Solti’s justly lauded performance of the Eighth from 1971 with the Chicago Symphony recorded in Vienna’s Sofiensaal still packs a mighty wallop. As it should, with The Vienna State Opera Choir, The Vienna Singverein, The Vienna Sangerknaben and eight supreme soloists recorded by Decca’s now legendary recording team headed by Kenneth Wilkinson. The Ninth here is the second Karajan, recorded live at his request in 1982. The final Deryck Cooke realization of The Tenth is conducted by Ricardo Chailly with The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Blumine, the original second movement of the First Symphony is handled by Ozawa and The Boston Symphony while the interesting curiosity Totenfeier, which was reworked to become the first movement of the Second Symphony, is played by Boulez and the Chicago Symphony. Das Lied von der Erde played by Giulini with The Berlin Philharmonic, Brigitte Fassbaender and Francisco Araiza, is a worthy contender in the Das Lied sweepstakes. Of the song cycles, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Kindertotenlieder, and the Rückert-Lieder enjoy outstanding interpretations by Thomas Hampson accompanied by Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic. Das klagende Lied was recorded by Riccardo Chailly conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony, the Dusseldorf Musikverein and five of the best solo voices of the day (1989). The startling originality of this early work is vividly conveyed both in performance and recording. Das Knaben Wunderhorn is performed to perfection by Anne Sofie von Otter and Thomas Quasthoff with Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic. The 17 Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jungendzeit is entrusted to three artists, Bernd Weikl, Anne Sofie von Otter and Thomas Hampson. The Piano Quartet movement is played by Oleg Maisenberg, Gidon Kremer and Veronika and Clemens Hagen. Finally, Mikhail Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra play the Entr’acte from Die drei Pintos, Weber’s unfinished opera that Mahler completed and orchestrated from the composer’s sketches. A nice touch. All together a very impressive package in every respect... doubly so as the price for the package is what one would have paid for a just few of the symphonies not so long ago! Unfortunately there are no translations of the texts included but they can be readily downloaded.

Paavo Järvi who distinguished himself with a reenergised Beethoven Symphonies cycle for RCA returns to Virgin Classics with a very impressive Mahler Second with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony plus the Orfeon Donostiarra choir of San Sebastian and soloists Alice Coote, mezzo, and soprano Natalie Dessay (50999 694586, 2 CDs). I had expected a good performance, not necessarily a great one. However, this is a spectacular one and a demonstration quality recording. Järvi has true Mahlerian sensibilities and this performance reveals an empathy that eludes many prominent conductors. It seems that any orchestra can be a Mahler orchestra under the right conductor. Järvi flawlessly balances his orchestra (he has been their music director since 2004) so that no lines are obscured. Even the glockenspiel towards the finale in the last movement is clearly heard without breaking out of the fabric. The off-stage forces are in the correct distant perspective with no diminished presence. There are rests between particular passages that are quite differently judged from any other performance that I’ve heard; their heavenly lengths appropriate for a “Resurrection” (couldn’t resist that). This is a not to be missed performance delivered in splendid, uncompressed sound.

Included in Audite’s release of four archive recordings issued in a Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Birthday Edition is the recital of Mahler Lieder recorded live on 14 September 1971 in the Philharmonie in Berlin (95.634). These discs are copied directly from the master tapes of Deutschlandradio so the fidelity of the stereo recording is first class. By 1971 Fischer-Dieskau was established as the consummate lieder singer, his beautifully shaded tones and sensitivity to the texts never more in evidence than here. Daniel Barenboim, his accompanist, was a perfect colleague. There are four songs from Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit; two Rückert-Lieder, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen; and Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Full texts are enclosed.

Working with Bernstein
by Jack Gottlieb
Amadeus Press
383 pages, photos; $24.99 US

“Is this book biased? You bet it is!” writes Jack Gottlieb in this memoir of his years spent working with Leonard Bernstein. As Bernstein’s assistant, on and off,  from 1958 until his death in 1990, Gottlieb worked on Bernstein’s concerts, scripts, program notes, orchestrations, recordings, compositions and  books, and picked up his laundry.

Gottlieb is candid about Bernstein’s always spontaneous, frequently volatile and sometimes shameless behaviour. Gottlieb describes LB, as he refers to him throughout this wonderful “grab-bag” of a memoir, as “passionate, profligate, overextending himself, taxing his associates.” One of Gottlieb’s diary entries reads, “Later LB upsets me by saying I’m a disappointment.” But he remains fiercely loyal to the man and his music. In fact, Gottlieb heads up the Leonard Bernstein Office today.

He creates a portrait of Bernstein in all his genius, exuberance, and irrepressible energy. Bernstein was driven by what Gottlieb calls “a burning need to communicate,” and Gottlieb covers the full range of his remarkably versatile accomplishments as a composer for Broadway, the concert hall and the opera house, conductor, pianist and even lyricist.

Everyone who ever met Bernstein, it seems, has a story. Even the FBI has their own dossier, because of his notorious political activity. But nobody’s anecdotes are funnier or more revealing than Gottlieb’s. Clearly his ability to appreciate the wry side of situations helped him survive an intense working relationship with a very complex man.

Gottlieb, a composer himself, includes his own program notes for many of Bernstein’s works. In their clarity and commitment to Bernstein’s own method of using purely musical values rather than programmatic references to talk about music, they promote appreciation of lesser known works like Gottlieb’s favourite, The Dybbuk, as well as under-estimated late works like Arias and Barcarolles and A Quiet Place.

Gottlieb provides the full text of the notorious yet misunderstood disclaimer Bernstein addressed to New York Philharmonic  audiences in 1962 before conducting Glenn Gould in Brahms’ Piano Concerto No.1 in D-. “I have only once before in my life had to submit to a soloist’s wholly new and incompatible concept,” Bernstein said, in part, “and that was the last time I accompanied Mr. Gould.” At the same time, Gottlieb provides a look behind the scenes before the concert as Gould, who Gottlieb describes as “a luminous pianist but quite messy about his appearance”, gets a haircut and grooming from Bernstein’s wife, Felicia, at the Bernstein apartment.

Given that Bernstein never, unfortunately, wrote his own memoirs, this contribution from such an observant, witty and loving associate – and his collection of personal  snapshots - is all the more treasurable.

Mara
by Lilly Barnes
Variety Crossing Press
345 pages; $22.95

“You are getting some notion what it’s like trying to fit everything I found out about Mara into one single person,” says Ted, the lead voice in Lilly Barnes’ novel about music, madness, racism and survival. “There’s always something goes squishing out the sides.” That something is why Ted is so fascinated with Mara. Mara, whose daughter Michelle, a jazz singer, has just died, has apparently cut off the dead girl’s earlobes. Ted, a jazz pianist, is obsessed with discovering why.

Lilly Barnes, a scriptwriter and documentary-maker for the CBC, uses her keen ear for dialogue to create a cast of vivid personalities to tell her story from various points of view. We hear from Ted, a jazz pianist enlisted to help Mara, Bear, who is Ted’s jazz partner and best friend, Bear’s wife Alicia, Michelle’s former neighbour Lena, and Mara herself, who had been a concert pianist in Europe. Barnes gives each one a distinctively idiosyncratic way of talking.

The story is set in Toronto in 1964, with frequent references to the thriving jazz scene then. By sending Ted off to Europe, Barnes is able to introduce characters  from Mara’s mysterious past and describe what it took for her to survive the Holocaust as a Jew. In fact, the most compelling aspects of this novel relate to Barnes’ own life, since her mother was a Russian concert pianist, Barnes herself was married to the late Canadian composer Milton Barnes, and her sons Micah and Daniel are jazz musicians.

At one point, Lena says, “I love a mystery. It’s where surprises come from.” But, richly layered and moving though this novel is,  surprises are few, since it turns out that things are just as they seemed all along. It’s just that Ted couldn’t see it. But at least in the end Ted, who had been musically blocked, gets his chops back –and more – and the music triumphs.

Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth
by Oliver Hilmes
Yale University Press
374 pages; $40.00

“The last thing I want to do,” writes Oliver Hilmes in this penetrating biography of Cosima Wagner, “is to criticize Cosima or turn her in to a psychotic study.” Fanatical, insecure, humourless, self-debasing, pugnacious, manipulative, and autocratic, Cosima offers few qualities that are likeable, and many that are downright repugnant. But she certainly is fascinating - all the more so when put into the perspective of her times and mileu as deftly as Hilmes does.

For the first half of this portrait, which roughly covers the first half of Cosima’s life, Hilmes treats her with sympathy.  Cut off from her mother, the Countess Marie d’Agoult, a writer who used the pen-name Daniel Stern, neglected by her father Franz Liszt and his termagant mistress Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, bullied by a harsh governess, she was understandably eager for an escape. She married Liszt’s brilliant but effete – and abusive – student Hans von Bülow. Soon after, her beloved brother and sister both died. She ran off with  Richard Wagner, colleague to her father (Wagner was just two years younger than Liszt) and mentor to her husband. Wagner was an egotistical  philanderer, though he did write Siegfried Idyll for her thirty-third  birthday in 1870, the year they were finally able to marry.   But as Hilmes covers the second half of Cosima’s very long life, from the death of Wagner in 1883 until her own death in 1930, at the age of ninety-two,  Hilmes’ sympathy is significantly reduced.  Cosima takes control of her husband’s fledgling opera festival in Bayreuth, and even manages to control the  production of Wagner’s operas. Hilmes describes how she would hide in a black-curtained booth at the side of the stage during rehearsals, sending her comments out on scraps of paper. In fact she turned the Bayreuth Festival  into a fiefdom, and established her own family as the ruling dynasty, a tradition which continues today with the recent appointment of two of her great grand-daughters as co-directors following the death of her grandson, their father Wolfgang.

But Hilmes shows Cosima’s Bayreuth Festival to be not just a family business but a  reactionary cult. Exposing how she turned Wagner’s nationalistic, anti-semitic ideas into a political cause that led directly to the destructive German nationalism of the Nazis, he traces the roots of the family’s well-documented ties to Hitler and the Nazis directly to Cosima.

The translation from the German by Wagner expert Stewart Spencer is elegant and clear. But I wonder whether it is Hilmes or Spenser who identifies Alma Mahler-Werfel as a ‘Viennese socialite’, since Hilmes’ previous books include a biography of Alma Mahler.

Sibelius
by Andrew Barnett
Yale University Press
461 pages, photos & musical examples; $28.00 US (pb)

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS HAS just released some of its most interesting recent titles in low-priced paperbacks – among them The Oboe by Geoffrey Burgess and Canadian musicologist Bruce Haynes; John Worthen’s Robert Schumann; and this biography of Jean Sibelius by Andrew Barnett. After the revelatory performances of Sibelius’s magnificent symphonies by the Toronto Symphony under Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard in April, and their broadcast on CBC, this excellent study of his life and works is especially welcome.

Sibelius was a melodist in an age when composers like Arnold Schoenberg, who was born just nine years later, were seeking out new languages, sounds and techniques. Throughout his long life, Sibelius steadfastly resisted the influence of serialism and the avant-garde, so that by the time he died in 1957 he was decidedly out of fashion. But today composers enthusiastically celebrate his influence.

Barnett, chairman of the UK Sibelius Society, takes a detailed and critical look at the music, showing how Sibelius’s emotional life and personal experiences shaped his rugged lyricism. Barnett points out his “trademark” motifs like the descending fifth (right in the opening of the Violin Concerto), and the ‘S-motif’, like an elongated turn (heard throughout Finlandia). He offers insights into the myths and landscapes of Sibelius’s homeland, Finland, where the composer spent his whole life.

Though Barnett doesn’t offer much psychological insight into Sibelius’s debilitating insecurities, he documents Sibelius’s self-destructiveness. As Sibelius wrote in his diary, he needed to drink “in order to be able to live at all,” adding at a later date that “alcohol is the only friend that never lets one down.” Describing how Sibelius made a bonfire of his late work, including the eagerly-awaited eighth symphony, Barnett writes, “What he had in mind was a scorched earth policy with regard to many of his scores.” Barnett then quotes Sibelius’s long-suffering wife Aino, who commented, “Afterwards, my husband’s manner was calmer and his spirits were brighter. It was a happy time.”

The select bibliography and discography have not been updated since the original publication in 2007, and Winter Fire by William Trotter is still absent from the list of relevant fictional works. But Barnett paints a lively portrait of this complicated man, and provides the historical context for his work, which opened the way for Finland to become the musical powerhouse it is today.

An Unfinished Score
by Elise Blackwell
Unbridled Books
265 pages;
$28.95 US

IN ELISE BLACKWELL’S intriguing new novel, all the main characters are musicians. Many are – or want to be – composers. Around that revolves the suspenseful plot, which deals with betrayal, blackmail, and a most unusual method of revenge.

Suzanne’s lover Alex has been killed in a plane crash. He was a famous conductor, she an accomplished violist. Suzanne is married to Ben, a cellist and composer. They share their house with Suzanne’s best friend Petra, a violinist in Suzanne’s string quartet, as well as Petra’s daughter, Adele, who – and the author makes sure the irony is not lost on us – is deaf.
Alex’s wife Olivia plans an elegant revenge by forcing Suzanne to complete a viola concerto her husband had left behind. Suzanne is such a consummate narcissist that she deceives herself into thinking that “through Alex’s music she will know what happened to her.” But Olivia has other plans, saying, “From now on, when you think of him you will also think of me.”
Ben’s unrelenting dullness gives experimental composers a bad name, and Petra’s glibness and endless supply of viola jokes grow tedious. But Olivia and Suzanne are compelling characters.

Blackwell, who teaches at the University of South Carolina, acknowleges the help of various sources like a masterclass given by Canada’s St. Lawrence Quartet for the musical side of things, such as her descriptions of the workings of Suzanne’s string quartet. She has peppered her story with arcane facts from music history, like the origins of Albinoni’s famous Adagio in G minor, as well as interesting figures like the late British composer Minna Keal (misspelled by Blackwell as Keel). They give the story breadth, steering it away from becoming maudlin by creating a musical context for the world Blackwell’s characters live in. But the confusing mixture of fact and fiction, as in the bizarre episode with violinist Joshua Felder, distracts from the story. In any case, this is a highly enjoyable novel that kept me happily reading until the surprising – and satisfying – end.

Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn
by R. Larry Todd
Oxford University Press
454 pages, illustrations & musical examples; $49.50

IN 1842, FELIX Mendelssohn was received by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Buckingham Palace. After he performed for them on the piano, the Queen chose a song from his Op. 9 collection, “Italien,” for him to accompany her. “I was obliged,” he wrote in a letter home – quoted by R. Larry Todd in this fascinating biography of Mendelssohn’s older sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel – “to confess that Fanny had written the song (which I found very hard, but pride must have a fall).”

Hensel wrote over 400 works, including songs, piano pieces, cantatas, concert arias, and a major string quartet. Yet few were published in her lifetime, even fewer under her own name. Performances were just as rare. It’s a situation that Larry Todd calls “one of the great injustices of music history,” though it is beginning to change, with publication and performances of her music, as well as excellent recordings like Toronto pianist Heather Schmidt’s recent disc.

As Todd explains, Hensel’s career as a concert pianist, conductor and composer could only be pursued in private, as an “ornament” to her life. It wasn’t just because she was a woman, but more because she was a wealthy upper-class woman – unlike, for instance, her friend Clara Schumann. Even Mendelssohn, who encouraged her composing, dissuaded her from publishing her music under her own name.

Hensel had a devoted and supportive husband, the painter and poet Wilhelm Hensel, and a loving son, named Sebastian Ludwig Felix after her three favourite composers. But her “symbiotic” relationship with her brother was the most complicated and significant one in her life. In 1847, at age 41, she died suddenly from a stroke. Six months later, Mendelssohn too died in the same way.

Todd, who teaches at Duke University, has specialized insight into Hensel and her extraordinary family, as well as the period, having written a major biography of Mendelssohn. The best thing about his book is the sensitive, meticulous way he looks at Hensel’s music and describes her distinctively imaginative and adventurous voice, making a persuasive case for it to be heard more frequently.

When she was 16 years old, cellist Ofra Harnoy emerged as a phenomenal musician with a distinctive style and sound. She was wooed by record companies and by the time she was 20 she had been signed to an exclusive contract by RCA Red Seal, which meant that she was promoted world-wide and engaged to appear and record with major international orchestras, such as the London Philharmonic. This kind of contract, signed in New York, was the first awarded to a Canadian since Glenn Gould. DOREMI CD (DHR-6607) contains three concertos recorded for Fanfare before the RCA signing and subsequently reissued by RCA in the mid 1980s. The light-hearted, flamboyant Offenbach Concerto in G major, with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Symphony is followed by Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations and the Saint-Saëns no.1 both with Paul Freeman and the Victoria Symphony. Strikingly apparent throughout all three are Harnoy’s natural musicality and effortless execution, giving performances worthy of a dedicatee. To our loss, by about 30, with her prestigious career in full bloom, she stopped performing. This CD is a shining reminder of an exceptional talent.

Toronto concert goers won’t soon forget the Sibelius Festival in Roy Thompson Hall last April. Guest conductor Thomas Dausgaard inspired the Toronto Symphony to achieve and sustain unsuspected levels of refinement and charm from shattering tuttis to hushed pianissimos. Dausgaard is a master of this repertoire as are and were other conductors, notably Beecham, Barbirolli, Koussevitzky, Karajan, Osmo Vanska, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Leonard Bernstein. The Unitel videos of four Sibelius Symphonies (1, 2, 5, & 7), with the Vienna Philharmonic under Bernstein have been released by Cmajor on 2 DVDs (702208). Some 20 years have passed since the live performances but age has not lessened their immediate impact. Symphony No.2 from October 1986 is a performance not of crescendo upon crescendo but of perfectly judged tempi and dynamics culminating in a definitive final statement. This is not possible if the conductor, as often happens, ‘gives it away’ too early and too often. The First, from February 1990 was recorded a bare eight months before the conductor’s death. Bernstein, although clearly enervated after the first movement (you can see it in his face and body), could not have offered a more searing valedictory address. The Fifth has real pulse and tension waiting to be relieved only by the final considered chords. Very special. In truth, they are all special, conducted by the wunderkind who never lost his heuristic mind. Excellent video definition, faultless camera work and thrilling five channel audio make this set quite irresistible.

Since Daniel Barenboim made his celebrated recordings of the Brahms Concertos with Barbirolli and the Philharmonia in 1967 we have seen and heard him in this repertoire many times. Barenboim’s Brahms is authoritative, vigorous and second to none. On a recent DVD of the First Concerto we heard him with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic and now another performance has arrived from EuroArts (2022020108), recorded on May 1, 2004 in the Herodes Atticus Odeon in Athens. Simon Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic during their first European concert tour after he took over as chief conductor. Even though it is an open air event, the sound is remarkable and the balances ideal. The orchestra plays with splendid vitality, confirming, as if it were necessary, the wisdom of his appointment. The orchestra offers a passionate reading of Brahms Piano Quartet No.1 op.25 in the orchestration by Arnold Schoenberg. This performance by Rattle and company has the impact and scale of another Brahms symphony. Watching the video reveals the high level of excitement and enthusiasm of the players and conductor. Brahms enthusiasts must not pass this by.

O,FORTUNA is Tony Palmer’s film offering a warts and all portrait of the late Carl Orff, the composer of Carmina Burana, Der Mond, Oedipus, Prometheus, Antigonae, Der Kluge, Music for Children, etc, etc (TP-DVD113). Orff was a man who would tolerate nothing short of perfection in performances of his work and who burst into a vitriolic attack against those who fell short. There are no actors: everyone seen and heard are the actual musicians and producers involved with Orff, his wives and offspring. Orff is seen in interviews and in demanding encounters with his colleagues. No complete performances are included in this DVD which provides extensive insights into this complex composer and human being who, as wife number three says, should have been born 2500 years ago. One thing is sure: you will listen to his works with fresh ears hereafter.

Jascha Horenstein was an iconic conductor who, although he was in demand on every continent, did not become the music director of a major orchestra even though he conducted them regularly. He was considered by many to be in the league of Furtwangler and Klemperer. DOREMI has a DVD of the Beethoven Ninth with the ORTF (DHR-7960) from October 31, 1963 with an all-star cast, Pilar Lorengar, Marga Hoffgen, Josef Traxel and Otto Weiner. This is one of only two known videos of Horenstein conducting. One suspects that a 30 second drop in sound level of the opening bars held back any official release. Nevertheless, this is an essential item for collectors, in spite of the picture quality of a vintage VHS with sound to match.

Long-established jazz groups have become as common as pop hits based on Mozart melodies topping the charts – they sometimes exist. But with accomplished improvisers tempted by side projects, bands often reconstitute and sidemen regularly have their own gigs. In most cases, though, this doesn’t affect the music’s quality.

Two bands confirm these realities. Ken Vandermark’s Vandermark5 (V5), which is at SPK (Polish Combatants Hall) June 17, has been together with only one personnel change for almost 15 years. Yet even Chicago-based Vandermark is involved in multiple side projects, as The Frame Quartet - 35 mm demonstrates. V5 members, cellist and electronics-player Fred Lonberg-Holm and drummer Tim Daisy are represented as well. Meanwhile saxophonist Dave Rempis, a V5 fixture for 10 years, shines on Cyrillic, a duo with drummer Frank Rosaly. New York pianist Matthew Shipp, whose trio plays June 13 at Gallery 345 on Sorauren Ave. is similarly part of numberless formations. Nu Bop Live involves some of his cohorts, who won’t be in Toronto. For an idea of what piano/bass communication sounds like involving Michael Bisio, the bassist who is in Shipp’s Toronto trio, there’s Session at 475 Kent  with Connie Crothers.

The Non-V5er on 35 mm (Okka Disk OD 12078 www.okkadisk.com) is Nate McBride, whose thick acoustic bass lines, electric bass thumps and manipulated wave forms distinguish this disc. Strident friction from Lonberg-Holm additionally gives the CD’s five long selections a rough-hewn quality, enhanced by Daisy’s reverberating and pinpointed cymbal slaps, not to mention Vandermark’s soloing which encompasses straight-ahead licks or tongue slaps on tenor saxophone and feathery clarinet trills. This is especially notable on Theatre Piece (for Jimmy Lyons) which links decisive sawing from the cellist, restrained plucks from the bassist and clatters, pops and rim shots from the drummer as Vandermark’s sound ranges from tremolo pitch-sliding on the clarinet to tongue-moistured saxophone flattement, flutters and split tones. Mid-way through, the tempo halves to allegro to expose faux romantic cello sequences that gradually shatters into sul ponticello lines mated with harsh, low-pitched saxophone rasps, balanced on crackling and buzzing electronics. Eventually the piece ends with an exposition of disconnected timbre-shredding from Vandermark and a conclusive string slap from the cellist.

Halve the number of players and double the performance intensity for Cyrillic (482 Music 482-1064 www.482music.com). Completely improvised, the selections include those with cymbal-chiming funk grooves, replete with honking reed patterns, plus others featuring smeared double-tonguing from Rempis, where he never seems to stop for breath, matched with rim shots and side spanks from Rosaly. Most impressive are In Plain Sight and How to Cross When Bridges are Out. The former, which could be a deconstructed classic R&B line, gains its rhythmic impetus from Rempis’ guttural baritone saxophone snorts. The latter is like a face off between never-ending ratcheting, rolls and ruffs from Rosaly’s Energizer Bunny-like drumming and Rempis’ Eric Dolphyish-alto saxophone with its broken-octave staccato runs and wide split tones. Changing the agitato tempo to andante, the tune slips into uncharted aleatory territory, echoing with excitement and abandon.

Both those adjectives are also on show on Shipp’s CD Nu Bop Live (Rai Trade RTPJ 0015 www.matthewshipp.com), especially on the 26-minute Nu Abstract suite. Putting aside the many-fingered staccato patterning on other tunes, the pianist initially restricts himself to occasional plinks, as drummer Guillermo Brown use electronics to unload crackling signal processing and hissing voice patches. After the pianist constructs a many-layered impressionistic response, he joins with William Parker’s fluid bass line and saxophonist Daniel Carter’s tightened reed snarls, in multi counterpoint. The performance swells to shrieking horn glossolalia, stretched and scattered bass-string movements and the pianist’s cascading note patterns. Climaxing alongside Brown’s explosions of drags and bounces, Shipp’s raw, exposed notes layer the interface alongside Carter’s strident altissimo cries and Parker’s triple-stopping.

Sophisticated piano-bass double contrapuntal interaction get an even better showcase on Session at 475 Kent (Mutable 17537-2 www.mutablemusic.com) as every tune is a culmination of Crothers’ thickly voiced, chromatic chords working out a challenge or response to Bisio’s chiming, slapping string reverberations. Chamber interludes, the CD’s four lengthy tracks evolve similarly to Resonance, the CD’s climatic finale. With Bisio double-stopping and pulling his strings fortissimo, Crothers’ glissandi and metronomic pumping, gradually give the sympathetic dynamic a novel undercurrent of unrelieved tension – embellished by the pianist’s strumming syncopation and the bassist’s woody string-stopping. Lightening her touch with freer harmonies, Bisio follows and shifts downwards into diminished pulses until the notes from both directions merge into a satisfying, protoplasmic whole.

There’s no shortage of forceful pianists in Montreal and one of the most promising on the A-list is South Korea-born Min Rager, whose First Steps (Effendi FND09 www.ragermusic.com) is very welcome five years after her sterling debut “Bright Road”. The all-original ten-track mostly mainstream program sparkles from the start of the opening blues Nothing To Gain, Nothing To Lose, heartily aided by an equally A-list of sidemen that includes excellent trumpeter Kevin Dean, alto Donny Kennedy and drummer Andre White. The title-piece is a sneakily smart take on the Coltrane classic (Giant Steps of course) while other unabashedly modern tunes have a plethora of slithery solos, confidently delivered, that punctuate melodies and attractive harmonic structures. As well as offering slick counterpoint, Rager conjures filigree runs that sound entirely appropriate on Bella, a duo with Dean, followed by the even more arresting ballad Persistence Of Memory a trio take with Dean and American tenor Walt Weiskopf. Passing is a high-voltage burner, Dean scores again on Portrait Of Miles, with Goodbye Manhattan a passionate slow blues, just one gem in an illuminating set.

Bassist Al Henderson is a formidable bandleader (notably his quartet and quintet) and composer (notably his work with Time Warp and recasting Duke Ellington) so it’s no surprise he’s in ambitious mode on the Juno-nominated Al Henderson Septet - Regeneration (Cornerstone CRST CD 132 www.alhenderson.ca). He taxes his all-star companions with a 10-piece program anchored by a six-part suite inspired by the architectural vision of Raymond Moriyama, specifically his ideas for the Canadian War Museum. This in turn has led Henderson to muse on the nature of war and the result is a work of both quality and interest interpreted with some distinction by his team – hornmen Alex Dean and Pat LaBarbera, pianist Richard Whiteman, drummer Barry Romberg and a pair of cellists, Matt Brubeck and Mark Chambers. With a difficult set of ideas to convey, this nonetheless must be successful. There’s other material here that nods to Inuit artist Turataga Ragee (Spirit Owl) and punta rocker Andy Palacio (Palacio) plus other tracks that offer chamber jazz, vaudeville and reflective passages.

Toronto guitarist Roy Patterson is always worth hearing, a long-term member of the local string elite and an artist replete with driving notions and thriving imagination. He justifies this on Roy Patterson Trio – Atlantic Blues (Toronto Jazz Composers Collective TJCC AS 001 www.roypatterson.com). For this elegant eight-tune master class the leader is supported by ageless sidemen bass Don Thompson and drummer Terry Clarke for long workouts on a mix of standards and three Patterson tunes, a live session recorded at Zooma Zooma Café in Jordan Village on the Niagara Escarpment. The musical atmosphere is warm, subtle, sophisticated and intimate, ripe with creative ingenuity, and the threesome works as one unit with playing that’s almost spiritual. Patterson’s deft fingering keeps melodies intact and everything precise and detailed. His title tune is suitably broody, Water is freewheeling pleasure, the exotic sheen of Brazilian music comes through on Jobim’s Favela, yet one gets the feeling that the guitarist is even more appealing when he casts off the unmistakable influence of Jim Hall. One question remains. Why is this Patterson’s first album in eight years?

The prolific Andrew Downing, his reputation as bassist-bandleader-composer already established, takes a bold step with his newest album Silents (Black Hen Music BHCD-0058 www.andrewdowning.com). His fascination with silent movies has led to this examination by a dozen musicians of a pair of early 20th century films – horror masterpiece The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari from 1920 by Germany’s Robert Weine and the fantasy tale Impossible Voyage from 1904 by France’s George Melies. Downing has created 18 tunes that pinpoint episodes in the films and the execution by the players – Downing forsaking bass for cello – is very satisfying. You’d love to be watching the plots unfold with this sophisticated music accompanying them, especially the 12 creepier pieces for Caligari, a tale wherein the evil doctor is exposed as a serial killer. Impossible Voyage is weird, narrating a trip by car, train and submarine by travellers who survive it all, even when the train reaches the sun! Among the players, clarinettist Quinsin Nachoff and bassoonist Peter Lutek stand out, while there’s disciplined work from the strings, notably bassist Joe Phillips – but all should take a bow.

The group dubbed Red Blue Green offers a debut album of 11 originals where de facto leader – pianist Tom Richards – dominates action with playing that suggests he’d be comfortable in any musical niche. On Transparent Thesis (Pet Mantis Records PMR006 www.petmantisrecords.com) he has clearly digested diverse approaches and revels in dark compositions, shifting time signatures, switching from lyricism to abstraction and is fully in control though there’s less jazz focus on occasion. He gets sympathetic backing from bass Andrew Pacheco and drummer Jay Sussman in what’s free improv with an innate sense of structure. The trio is both thoughtful and adventurous, keeps jarring elements to a minimum, inserts classical influences and, importantly, play quieter than The Bad Plus. Best tunes: Song For Under A Bridge, Recovery and Lost Arrow.

Little Hearts
Shannon Butcher
Independent SB2010
(www.shannonbutcher.com)

Jazz singer Shannon Butcher has come out with another great album and its main strength is in the material she’s chosen to cover. She’s done what I think all modern jazz singers should be doing, i.e. quit covering the done-to-death standards and look to a more modern songbook for fodder. Sure there’s a place for the Gershwin and Porter rehashings now and then - especially in live performance - but when greats like Ella and Sarah have recorded them before, a singer had better be bringing something pretty interesting to the party, or why should we buy it? So when I see 70s and 80s tunes on a CD cover, as is the case with “Little Hearts,” it’s a sign that an artist is thinking outside the box, and that’s what jazz is all about. The Bacharach-David beauty Walk on By gets a moody, heartfelt treatment that reflects the sentiment of the lyrics better than the peppy Warwick original (sorry Dionne!) and Bryan Adams’ Run to You goes Latin American with Daniel Stone on cajon and Rob Piltch doing his usual tasteful nylon string guitar work.

Butcher has also done some very fine songwriting on this album. Joy in My Heart kicks off the disc with a soulful ode to staying positive and the duet with the enormously talented Michael Kaeshammer - The Last Word - is a cute nod to 60s romantic comedies. The one older standard covered here - Irving Berlin’s What’ll I Do - has been given an inventive alt-country facelift courtesy of Piltch’s twangy, plaintive guitar work.

Concert Note: Butcher’s CD release event is at Hugh’s Room on June 2.

Brown Sugar
Shakura S’Aida
Ruf Records Ruf 1155
(www.shakurasaida.com)

What a sweet blast. Shakura S’Aida has earned praise in Canada as a singer, songwriter and actress of substance and now she’s got a firm grip on the solo career ladder with a scintillating new CD to follow her excellent album “Blueprint”.

Released in North America in April and before that in Europe, “Brown Sugar” lets S’Aida, whose family arrived in Toronto in the 1970s, use the vast experience gained from working with luminaries such as Jimmy Smith, Ruth Brown and Patti LaBelle.

It’s a startlingly good album that bears repeated listening, diction so clear that the cool sounds one might expect don’t happen. There’s emotional connection and passion aplenty here on a dozen tracks, 11 of which employed power guitarist Donna Grantis to work with S’Aida in lyrics and music. The band is tight, featuring organist Lance Anderson, bass Dave Smith, drummer Steve Potts and Rick Steff on keyboards.

Mr. Right is a superb opener best at big volume and offers a glimpse of the vocalist’s attractive high warble. Walk Out That Door is a fetching shuffle while Gonna Tell My Baby is a slow burner with fierce wails. Two successive tunes, the grittily intimate Did It Break Your Heart and the swinging Missing The Good And The Bad would have been great fodder for Janis Joplin and they’re followed by a delightful trio of songs that break the raunch barrier - Sweet Spot, the bitter title track and Anti Love Song.

For the First Time
Hugh O’Connor; Mark Ferguson; John Geggie; Don Johnson
True North Records TND532
(www.truenorthrecords.com)
In an age when almost anyone can put out a CD and almost everybody does, in some cases reducing the music to the status of a calling card, it’s refreshing to come across a first time album by a veteran player who simply wants to “tell his story”.

The musician is Ottawa born saxophonist, Hugh O’Connor. At age 81 O’Conner, who began playing in the late 1940s, has just released his first CD. His approach is refreshingly melodic and he plays with an authority that says, “For me, here’s where it’s at.”

Recorded in the Almonte Ontario Old Town Hall, the CD consists of a programme of superior standards ranging from the seldom played A Portrait Of Jenny to the frequently performed My Funny Valentine on the opening chorus of which there is a Desmond-ish quality to the sound of his horn. But Hugh is definitely his own man and puts an individual stamp on this recording which also includes such great songs as In The Wee Small Hours, How About You and The More I See You.

He is ably and tastefully accompanied by pianist Mark Ferguson - yes the same Mark who used to be a trombone player in Toronto - bassist John Geggie and, on five of the twelve tracks, drummer Don Johnson.

Although active and successful, mainly around the Ottawa area, he has maintained a relatively low profile on the Canadian jazz scene. Perhaps that can change with the release of this very welcome CD.

Old School: James Tenney
Zeitkratzer
Zeitkratzer Productions ZKR 0010

Without the necessity for surround-sound or other methods of sonic dissemination, James Tenney (1934-2006) composed tension-laden pieces such as the three here, whose crescendos and decrescendos derive from concentrated orchestration. As the Berlin-based, ad hoc Zeitkratzer ensemble of two woodwinds, two brass, three strings, percussion and director/pianist Reinhold Friedl demonstrate on this exceptional CD, properly performing the themes of the long-time (1976-2000) York University music professor depends as much on harmonic convergence as intonation, attack and acoustics.

Most fascinating and mostly fortissimo is 1988’s Critical Band. Based on standard pitch A and its fundamentals, this exercise in tonal expansion undulates on pitches that concentrate and divide as they modulate infinitesimally and recurrently. Only when the final variation arrives can the capillary timbres of Matt Davis’ trumpet and Hayden Chisholm’s alto saxophone be distinguished from the others.

Slightly lengthier, 1976’s Harmonium #2, which details the deliberate build-up and break-down of a chord, exposes fundamentals, as the harmonic progression expands through Friedl’s intense keyboard clusters. After variants on the narrative – related to the circle of fifths – reflect inwards onto themselves as they advance chromatically, the resolution involves a crescendo involving articulating Hilary Jeffrey’s trombone reverberations plus thick piano patterns.

Distinctive, the performances are both authoritative and inventive.

Two Roads to Exile
ARC Ensemble
RCA Red Seal 88697 64490 2

“A sense of exile”, the opening of the CD booklet notes tells us, “is not always accompanied by geographical displacement.” Hence the title of this outstanding disc of virtually unknown works by Adolf Busch – who, although not Jewish, chose to leave Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933 – and Walter Braunfels, who, while half-Jewish, chose to remain in Germany despite the implications for his career and personal safety.

Toronto’s ARC Ensemble (Artists of The Royal Conservatory) specializes in reviving long-buried and essentially-forgotten repertoire, especially the works of composers whose lives were fundamentally altered by the Second World War and in particular by the Holocaust.

Both Busch, now remembered primarily as a violinist and as leader of the Busch Quartet, and Braunfels were established composers in 1920s Germany. Busch’s String Sextet Op.40 from 1928 (revised in 1933) remains unpublished, however, and Braunfel’s String Quintet Op.63, from 1945, has never been recorded before. Both works are strongly in the German Romantic tradition, a factor which worked against both composers in the post-war years, despite their treatment by the Third Reich.

The ARC members – Marie Bérard and Benjamin Bowman (violins), Steven Dann and Carolyn Blackwell (violas), Bryan Epperson and David Hetherington (cellos) – are superb throughout. Recorded in the RCM’s Koerner Hall last November, every nuance of their performance is magnificently captured by producer David Frost. The recording has the distinction of being the first produced in this acoustically superior new concert venue. The excellent booklet notes are by ARC Artistic Director Simon Wynberg. An absolute gem of a CD.