Sarah Bernstein – Veer Quartet
Sarah Bernstein; Sana Nagano; Leonor Falcon; Nick Jozwiak
New Focus Recordings Pan 26 (newfocusrecordings.com)

Sarah Bernstein is a violinist and composer exploring the boundaries of genres, mixing elements of jazz, the avant-garde, electronica and improvisation. On this album, she explores the more traditional sounds of a string quartet but not with a result that is at all traditional. Her six compositions range from the hectic and angular News Cycle Progression to the more lyrical Clay Myth with its broad, elegiac head, to Hidden where she flirts with minimalist arpeggiation and an unpredictable ending. 

My favourite track is the first one, Frames No.1: clear jazz references with a walking bass in the cello, solid grooves, and a simple form that gives soloing time to each of the four players. The string playing throughout is excellent though particular improv kudos go to Bernstein and cellist Nick Jozwiak who throws some surprisingly dense material into his solos. Bernstein often has the group accompany the solos with pizzicato: a nice device that sounds great. 

Four string players of this quality have to be classically trained so you won’t hear the sort of language you might expect from jazzers. What you do hear is a group of excellent musicians searching for something new. Bravo to that.

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Andy Akiho – Oculus
Various Artists
Aki Rhythm Productions ARP-R008 (akirhythmproductions.bandcamp.com/album/oculus-2)

Andy Akiho is a rising star on the American new music scene. He’s a virtuoso player of steel pan drums, who, as a composer, has been nominated for big prizes like the Pulitzer and Grammy Awards. One can hear why: good ideas abound, and no section overstays its welcome. Akiho uses grooves not as a gimmick but as a way to drive you from one intriguing idea to another. 

Much of this tree-themed disc is taken up with his five-part LigNEous Suite for string quartet and marimba, played brilliantly by the Dover Quartet with Ian Rosenbaum. Akiho finds all kinds of ways to vary the marimba’s timbre, using bundles of sticks, wooden mallets, even an elastic band. The strings, too, are given effects like crunches, snaps, body knocks and glissandi, but even without all this colour the compositions are compelling: caffeinated, driving grooves, unpredictable codas, dark and brooding slow movements. 

Also included on the disc are Speaking Tree for string quintet, brass quintet and percussion, and Deciduous for violin and steel pan. The former features wonderful ensemble playing with more of Akiho’s groove-oriented but complex writing, including a delightful section with toy piano. At just over 15 minutes, Deciduous is the longest work on the disc and gives ample scope to Akiho’s spectacular pan playing, paired with Kristin Lee’s equally masterful violin performance in a duet filled with surprising colour and dash. The disc cover includes textural and evocative artwork by American photographer Stuart Rome.

enfolding
String Orchestra of Brooklyn
New Focus Recordings FCR331 (thesob.org)

True to its title, the music on this album creates an encompassing sonic space for the listener, encouraging inwardness and introspection. SOB’s innovative new release features two composers that dive into the exploration of sound in its pure form and experiment with extended string techniques and grainy, undiluted textures. Both compositions are premiere recordings and both are beaming with originality. The orchestra never gets in the way of the music but rather supports it with subtle interpretative choices. 

Outside Only Sound by Scott Wollschleger was commissioned by SOB at the time when concerts in outside spaces were becoming a new normal due to the pandemic restrictions. Recorded live at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, this piece cleverly juxtaposes outside spaces and internal experiences. The immediate sounds of everyday life, such as voices, footsteps, traffic and wind are an organic part of the composition; and strings mix, match, colour and interact with them. The changes in volume and spatiality add richness to the listening experience.

with eyes the colour of time, composed by Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2022. Made of movements and interludes, with poetic titles referring to works of art in the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu at the time of its opening in 1980, it presents a flowing, ever-changing sound that is visceral and elemental. The most delightful manipulation of sonic density by Lanzilotti incorporates a peaceful motif in the strings among explorations of raw textures. The last movement on the album, enfolding, leaves the listener in a harmonious state of contemplation.

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Guy Sacre – Oeuvres pour piano
Billy Eidi
Le Palais des Dégustateurs PDD 028 (lepalaisdesdegustateurs.com)

There is, perhaps, no better way to become familiar with an individual composer’s ideas and performance practice than to hear them (or someone close to them) perform their works. Consider, for example, Olivier Messiaen’s recordings of his own organ music, or Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen performing her husband’s piano compositions, and how these aural experiences can augment – and sometimes overcome – the murky clarity present in printed music.

Such is the case with Billy Eidi’s interpretation of Guy Sacre’s piano works. Eidi and Sacre (b.1948) worked together in the 1990s to create the association Contrechants, intended to rediscover unknown French repertoire. Equal parts scholar and composer, Sacre’s greatest contribution to musicology is perhaps La Musique de Piano, a critical census of a large part of the piano repertoire, dealing with 4,000 works by 272 composers. 

Given his broad knowledge of piano repertoire, especially from French composers, it is no surprise that Sacre’s own compositions contain a wide range of influences and techniques. Many of his works utilize classical forms and structures over which are draped the harmonies and melodies of the early 20th century, inspired by Fauré, Debussy and Milhaud. This is, at its core, beautiful music and it traverses a range of affects and depth of expression without ever losing its levity, which is a remarkable compositional achievement.

While Sacre certainly writes stunning material, it is up to the interpreter to make it so, and Eidi brings a lightness of touch that, even in the most solemn and profound moments, provides much-needed clarity and transparency. This disc is a magnificent example of how an ideal combination of performer and composer can produce music of transcendent and sublime beauty.

Big Things
Icarus Quartet
Furious Artisans FACD6829 (icarusquartet.org)

There are those who call out “somebody should do [a thing]” and there are those like the Icarus Quartet who just do them. In this case, the thing to do is find a jam where interesting, exploratory music is buoyed by popular or (gasp) commercial music. Big Things is the title track of a three-work disc from this double-duo: two pianos, two percussion. Big sounds and big gestures are what they bring to the party, or perhaps the brunch table. A running gag in the liner notes is the American pancake, in all its fluffy glory. Not sure how it ties to the actual music, but a gimmick’s a gimmick, and they go with it, including the track running times expressed as dollar-and-cent prices on a diner-style menu. 

Fortunately, there’s no gimmick in the performance, for truly, these lads play the s#!+ out of the material. I like track 1 and tracks 3-10 most. That leaves Brad Lubman’s Tangents, track 2, and at over twenty dollars (cough, minutes), you’d want to like it the most. Alas. Michael Laurello’s title track is just over half that price, but beautifully poses two one-word questions in shifty ways: isitorisitnotanostinato? And whenisanostinatonotanostinato? Forgiveme. Buy the disc, you’ll get the answers, or a fun trip towards them. 

Performances of these first two works are just the bomb, as the kids used to say, at some point. Favourite item of all, a bunch of small sides that add up to the second half of this one-hour disc (30 bucks), Paul Lansky’s Textures. Each short section of eight develops a synaesthetic depiction: Striations, Soft Substrate, Granite, just some of the textures conjured in sound; and then Slither, wherein one is reminded that sometimes very LARGE things can slither.

A Series of Indecipherable Glyphs
NakedEye Ensemble
New Focus Recordings FCR338 (newfocusrecordings.com)

Were I to throw a large party, I’d set this new release on random shuffle until enough guests noticed that the tracks were beginning to sound familiar. The selections are alternately stimulating and mesmerizing. NakedEye Ensemble, out of Pittsburgh, have hitched their axes to Frank Zappa’s star, and his legacy. He left so much music still to be explored, it’s high time more groups put together arrangements like track 11, Zappa’s Sinister Footwear II. With the recent agreement between the Zappa family trust and Universal Music, we’ll likely hear more renditions of his extraordinary work.

Rhythmically exacting and full of rapid, jagged melodic passages, shared by multiple unison voices, Footwear is just the right follow-up to a more mysterious and occasionally tiresome work of AI meets improv, Nick Didkovsky’s Amalia’s Secret. I’m allowing some oldster grump when it comes to art that’s in part generated by algorithms. Some of it is pretty cool, but some of it just sounds… mechanical? I imagine my party guests won’t much care about how the ten brief segments were generated. I’ll just go open more wine.

Following are five more tracks, two that drop clocks (yet MORE automatism!!) into the mix. [These Hands] Hold Nothing by Whitney George ticks and tocks, and Dum Spectas Fugio by Rusty Banks clunks and clonks; both beat more or less at 60 per minute, and then Less is More by Molly Joyce (in performance accompanied by a light show) raises the pulse while easing into meditation. They’re all much better pieces than I’m making them sound, and the playing is gorgeous.

Rounding out the disc, Aaron Jay Myers’ Strabimus and Richard Belcastro’s Nepetalactone take up the Zappa-ista torch. The latter title is the psychoactive ingredient in catnip. Fun stuff, well played.

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Shawn Crouch – Chaos Theory
Various Artists
Acis APL56620 (acisproductions.com)

Hats off to Shawn Crouch. The tracks on his recent release, Chaos Theory, enchant the ear and engage the mind. Liner notes sometimes muddy the waters, but these (apparently written by Crouch himself) are brief and informative. He’s fond of circles, canons, variations, and games and puzzles too. 

Get right to listening, and give it a twice-over before coming to any conclusions. There are brilliant performances on each track, and there’s a bit of everything in the variety. My favourite is probably the easiest to get inside of: 95 South, a woodwind trio that covers the U.S. Eastern Seaboard in three large leaps. Lake Road; Dublin, NH recalls the scene of a music festival he attended in his youth. 74th and Third; New York, NY must mean he lived in Manhattan for some of his early adulthood. It varies from frenetic to meditative. Bay Drive; Miami Beach, FL is the finale of the piece and the place where parenthood overtakes other concerns. Dedicated to his son, it stands in sharp and welcome contrast to the more angular writing elsewhere.

Not that there’s any problem with the buzzing zigzags of the other pieces on the disc. A lengthy and cerebrally conceived solo sonata for cello is convincingly rendered by Craig Hultgren. A pictogram in the liner notes, probably Crouch’s own work, helps explain the tonic gravitational energy that propels Orbital Variations. This one needs more time to tell its story. I look forward to hearing it again.

It’s so good to hear music that explores new sonic worldscapes while remaining idiomatic, such that the instrumentalist makes use of their strongest technical ability bringing the work to life. Crouch is old school in that regard, proving that solid compositional technique still makes for the most listenable avant-garde music.

Ivanovs – Symphonies Nos. 17 & 18
Latvian National Symphony Orchestra; Guntis Kuzma
LMIC SKANI 141 (skani.lv)

In the March-April 2022 WholeNote, I described Jānis Ivanovs’ Symphonies Nos.15 and 16 as “filled with dark sonorities, propulsive energy and clamorous dissonances,” qualities that reappeared, though less explosively, in his next two symphonies.

The Moderato. Allegro of Ivanovs’ 32-minute Symphony No.17 in C Major (1976) begins slowly, with sombre, portentous music leading to tormented struggle and anguished outbursts, in their wake a haunting, “surviving” solo clarinet. The Allegro turns mysterious, its hollow, black-and-gold sonorities recalling Sibelius’ enigmatic Fourth. The Adagio suggests, to me, an incense-heavy church service, building to a hymn-like climax, followed by a muted recessional. The closing Allegro moderato seems to be marching off to yet another battle, but this time Ivanovs eschewed further violence, the symphony ending in peaceful serenity. 

The 35-minute Symphony No.18 in E Minor (1977) opens with the Moderato. Tranquillo referencing the first bars of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No.2, also in E Minor. Unsurprisingly, the Tranquillo is soon negated by sinister turbulence, foreboding reinforced in the restless Allegro. Ivanovs, when interviewed about this work, referred to “the young men” who fought in World War II. An extended elegy for those “young men,” Andante. Tenebroso, moves from gloom to nobility, pride and reverence. The martial anthems of the Allegro moderato end the symphony in a burst of patriotic fervour.

Conductor Guntis Kuzma and the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra brilliantly convey the dramatic and emotional extremes of their countryman’s extremely dramatic, emotion-laden music.

MoonStrike – Jennifer Higdon; Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate; Pierre Jalbert
Apollo Chamber Players
Azica ACD-71352 (apollochamberplayers.org/media)

This CD presents three recent works for string quartet commissioned and enthusiastically performed by the Houston-based Apollo Chamber Players.

Jennifer Higdon says she grew up “in the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains,” the setting of her opera Cold Mountain. Music from the opera appears in her 16-minute In the Shadow of the Mountain (2020), both works reflecting, she writes, “The struggles of survival in Appalachia, the majesty of its natural features and the sonorities of the mountains’ music.” In affecting American-pastoral style, it evoked for me a day’s passage – uncertain dawn leading to resolute, animated engagement with the day’s demands, midday rest and reflection, resumption of busily rhythmic work, ending serenely with the coming of night and sleep.

Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s 18-minute MoonStrike (2019) commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Chickasaw astronaut John Herrington engagingly narrates three Indigenous myths about the moon; combined with picture-painting music drawing from traditional songs, this is a winning contribution to the children’s concert repertoire. 

New Hampshire-born Pierre Jalbert drew upon three folk songs of his French-Canadian ancestors for his three-movement, 16-minute L’esprit du Nord (2019). It begins with energized variations on Chanson de Lisette. The slow Cantique includes Les Pélerins and what Jalbert calls “a Passion song,” plus snippets from a 1940s field recording of a chanting woman. The vigorous Fiddle Dance, “inspired,” writes Jalbert, “by the French-Canadian fiddling tradition,” cheerfully ends the work and the CD.

Wadada Leo Smith – String Quartets 1-12
RedKoral Quartet
TUM Records TUM BOX 005 (tumrecords.com)

The composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith is – together with Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell and others of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) – a composer in the revolutionary vein of Igor Stravinsky. He (Smith) is one of the mighty propellers of the musical continuum. So what does that have to with this critique? 

Let’s pretend we are watching an excerpt from Wolf Koenig’s 1965 documentary and we are now at the part where Koenig asks Stravinsky: “Who created music?” Restless with excitement Stravinsky, says: “God did.” Then he adds: “I think … Even not think… I am sure… with the creation there was just a BIG sound of drum and cymbals… and that the creation of music.” Spinning on that vibrant, rhythmic axis of creation is the continuum of music,

I believe that somewhere in their hearts, more than anyone else, Wadada Leo Smith appears to have somehow been privy to that exact moment of Creation. This is why his music has its origins in the Ankh (the Egyptian symbol of Life), the root of Smith’s conception – his Ankhrasmation. It is out of this singular taproot that Smith’s music swirls in an elegant ellipsis, in the musical continuum. 

Indeed Smith’s music seems to say that the tradition (that propels this continuum) is a wonderful reality, but not understanding that the inner dynamic of tradition is always to innovate, is a prison. Since his first acknowledged works on TUM Records, A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday, The Chicago Symphonies and, now the epic collection – his String Quartets Nos.1-12 in this lavishly produced (even by TUM standards) set, Smith has once again chiselled his uniquely beautiful, but defiantly provocative, body of work from out of the bedrock of what square-eyed distributors like to call the Jazz and the European Classical traditions. 

But while that might imply a pastiche of archetypal Black American-and-Western European models, such as symphonies, sonnets and string quartets, instead even while using the European terminology almost sardonically, (on The Chicago Symphonies) and certainly on these string quartets, Smith forces his listeners to reconsider what tradition really is. 

In String Quartets Nos.1-12, Smith positions himself in creative conflict with age-old protocols about how string quartets “ought” to work. By actively throwing overboard melodic, structural and harmonic hooks that have been expressively blunted through overuse, he builds from what might – or might not – be left. Smith, as both composer and performer, shows himself to be instinctively radical. The irresistible force of his work pulls in its wake with the RedKoral Quartet, harpist Alison Björkedal (String Quartet No 4), fellow Pulitzer Prize-winning pianist Anthony Davis (String Quartet No.6), percussionist Lynn Vartan (String Quartet No.6), guitarist Stuart Fox (String Quartet No.7) and Thomas Buckner (voice on String Quartet No.8). 

Together, the performers find themselves puréeing classical music’s sublime melodic and harmonic gestures into motor rhythms, volatile white noise and the most compelling absurdist theatrics as they wrench their instruments apart and journey through the musical debris. The music elevates the spirit of famous black men (Ulysses Simpson Kay, Thomas Jefferson Anderson, Jr., Hale Smith and George Theophilus Walker in String Quartet No 1, Haki R. Madhubuti in String Quartet No 5, Indigenous Peruvian heroes in String Quartet No. 7, Ma Rainey and Marion Anderson in String Quartet No.9, Louis Armstrong in String Quartet No.11… and so on.

In this music, definitions of beauty – Smith’s Black American definitions of beauty – are central to his artistic credo in these iconic works. But the composer – with Ankhrasmation gestures of thought and musical action – argues that his music and the artists performing it must make the distinction between overly perfumed, audience-ingratiating beauty typical of commercial music – which he regards as disturbingly manipulative – and “authentic” beauty, as naturally evocative as God, the Master Creator intended it to be.

This landmark 7-CD release marks the conclusion of a celebration of the 80th anniversary of Wadada Leo Smith’s birth. The collection lands smack dab onto the earth’s musical map as a proverbial masterpiece of modernist music. Smith shepherds the crack musicians of the RedKoral Quartet and celebrated guests through an epic sojourn of his uncompromising soundworld. If the sounds that Smith hears in his inner ear move off the radar of conventional instrumental timbre, the RedKoral, who have worked extensively with him over the past decade, and other musicians unerringly zone into his musical intentions, realizing his ideas to perfection.

All Roads
Anthony Cheung
New Focus Recordings FCR263 (newfocusrecordings.com)

To read, or not to read (the booklet notes to a recording) before listening to its music; that is usually the first question that pops into a critic’s head. Apologies need be made, I suppose, to Shakespeare whose beauteous iambic pentameter has been unabashedly appropriated by composer Anthony Cheung for All Roads, an album of rather extraordinary program music. 

There are numerous rewards in store for anyone who delights in following lines of pure musical thought as evinced by the wondrous repertoire proffered by Cheung. Nothing is gratuitous or extraneous, nor can the musical character ever be taken for granted. This is true when you plunge deeply into the song All Roads. Cheung creates the apogee of the album right out of the gates as he inhabits (sort of) Billy Strayhorn’s melancholy and the thinly disguised autobiographical character from Lush Life. Cheung’s anti-hero also staggers elegantly along a similar road which Strayhorn’s protagonist once took as he moped his way home. Pianist Gilles Vonsattel traces the wobbly route home with elliptical, arpeggiated Ellingtonian runs as a sky-dome darkens with the strings of the Escher Quartet. 

Elective Memory and Character Studies are exquisite essays with Cheung’s pianism and Miranda Cuckson’s sinuous violin lines with subtle variations and nuanced inflection. Meanwhile on the enlightened finale, All thorn, but cousin to your rose, lofty theatrics by Paulina Swierczek (soprano) and Jacob Greenberg (piano) bring Vladimir Nabokov and Alexander Pushkin to life again.

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Red
Marina Hasselberg
Redshift Records (redshiftrecords.org)

Marina Hasselberg is a Portuguese-born, Vancouver-resident cellist comfortable in Baroque music, contemporary composed music and free improvisation, working in a range that includes Vancouver New Music, Early Music Vancouver, collaborations with other contemporary improvisers like Peggy Lee and Okkyung Lee and gig work with Mariah Carey. Red is her full-length debut, presenting some essential facets of her musical personality, both as soloist and in improvisatory groups.

Red opens with an immediate declaration of independence, Hasselberg spanning centuries as she performs Gabrielli’s Ricercar Primo accompanied by improvising electronic musician Giorgio Magnanensi; they then follow that with S6, a free improvisation. Where the Sand Is Hot will suggest a similarly broad time span. Guitarist Aram Bajakian and drummer Kenton Loewen join in a modal improvisation with Hasselberg plucking intense, shifting, rhythmic patterns that suggest the guembri, a bass lute played for centuries by the Gnawa people of Morocco.

That sometimes playful ability to span genre and time is no deterrent to Hasselberg’s focus. That’s evident in the disc’s most concentrated moment: composer Linda Catlin Smith’s Ricercar, which develops the tone and intensity evident in the earlier Gabrielli in a sustained work. There’s further evidence of the emotional depth of Hasselberg’s playing in the concluding Things Fall Apart, Craig Aalders’ composition for cello and tape. Along the way, Hasselberg finds further opportunities to improvise with Magnanensi, Bajakian, Loewen and violinist Jesse Zubot, in this vivid introduction to a musician as skilful as she is adventurous.

Aspire – Jofre; Piazzolla; Villa-Lobos
Seunghee Lee; JP Jofre; London Symphony Orchestra; Enrico Fagone
Musica Solis MS202208 (musicasolis.com)

Clarinetist Seunghee Lee and Argentian bandeonist/composer/arranger JP Jofre met in New York City where Lee first heard Jofre’s compositions. She was very “intrigued” by the bandoneon which totally makes sense as both their instruments share similar reed sound production. Lee requested something for clarinet and bandoneon. Their resulting collaboration is heard here in eight compositions and arrangements on Lee’s independent label.

Jofre has a perfect, respectful vision of Argentinian music including that for the tango. His Lee commissioned clarinet/orchestra arrangement of Piazzolla’s Tango Étude No.3 is spectacular, remaining true to the Piazzolla sound with lush florid virtuosic clarinet lines and contrasting rhythmic orchestral sounds, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under Enrico Fagone. Lee’s clarinet (instead of voice) and eight cello arrangement of Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No.5 Aria (Cantilena) is slower, with colourful low/high pitch contrasts and tight doubled instrumental lines.  

Six Jofre originals are featured. The upbeat Primavera has clear virtuosic interchanges between clarinet, bandoneon and orchestra. The three-movement Lee-commission Double Concerto for Clarinet, Bandoneon and Orchestra draws from tango, popular and classical music. I. Vals Irreal has short gloomy to energetic clarinet and bandoneon solo/duet ideas above the orchestra. Dramatic exciting III. Aboriginal combines rhythmic instrumental fun to its closing percussive blast. Perfect blending of moving lines and held notes in two clarinet/bandoneon duets, Como el Agua and Sweet Dreams. More tango neoclassical sounds in Tangodromo, and the mood-changing Taranguino, each for clarinet, bandoneon and piano (Steven Beck).  

A must-be-heard exploration of styles passionately composed and performed.

Nick Storring – Music from Wéi 成
Nick Storring
Orange Milk Records (orangemilkrecords.bandcamp.com)

Toronto-based Canadian composer/musician Nick Storring was commissioned by his frequent Toronto collaborator/choreographer Yvonne Ng (of tiger princess dance projects) to compose music for her five-dancer piece Wéi (成). Starting in a December 2017 Banff Centre residency, and completed in 2021, Storring takes a single instrument – the piano – and composes, performs and records layered multi-tracks on grand and upright pianos and a Yamaha computer-controlled acoustic Disklavier piano to create sounds ranging from traditional to prepared piano to full orchestral soundscapes and silences. 

A short Wéi 成 YouTube clip with dancers reaffirms Storring’s detailed understanding of creating dance music. It is equally fantastic as listening music. The opening I introduces the listener to Storring’s multi-faceted music. A contemplative held-note gradual crescendo from silence opens. A piano single line widely spaced lyrical melody follows, then gradual introduction of tonal to atonal chords. A fadeout section is followed by a crescendo of repeated notes, effects, loud rumbling sounds like a dramatic full orchestra then back to more quiet atonal electronic keyboard effects, to closing wobbling held notes fading directly to the next track. Other sections build on these, including subtle tastes of jazz, rock low notes, romantic and contemporary sounds in III;  full orchestral sound with wide-pitched electronic effects in V; and funky musical ideas from drum-like rocking cymbal crashes and guitar-like grooves to the closing quiet ending in VI.

Storring’s experimental compositions and performances, ranging from ambient calm to shorter tense qualities, are inspirational.

Parisa Sabet – A Cup of Sins
Various Artists
Redshift Records TK478 (redshiftrecords.org)

Iranian-Canadian composer Parisa Sabet’s six compositions here draw on Iranian traditional music and Western music like minimalism, atonalism and romanticism, perfectly performed by Jacqueline Woodley (soprano), Christina Petrowska Quilico (piano), Laurel Swinden (flute), Peter Stoll (clarinet), Robert Grieve (electric guitar), Matthias McIntire (violin/viola), Dobrochna Zubek (cello), Robert Grieve (electric guitar) and Joshua Tamayo (conductor).

Highlights include the upbeat chamber piece Shurangiz, a well-orchestrated Western/Iranian influenced composition with rhythmic repetitive grooves, lush clarinet and flute lines, and colourful repeated piano notes, inspired by contemporary Iranian Tar player/composer Ali Ghamsari. Woodley and Petrowska Quilico perform the three-movement Dance in your Blood, a setting of an English translation of a Farsi poem by Rumi. It combines classical art song like the Movement I opening piano solo and gentle vocals, and wild free expression Movement II with modern vocal effects like the repeated word “love,” and atonal piano chords. Violin solo Geyrani, inspired by Iranian kamancheh virtuoso/composer Kayhan Kalhor, has colourful held notes, alternating high/low pitched lines and high squeaky notes. McIntire’s amazing performance sounds like more than one violinist playing! 

Set to a text about sexual violence and trauma by poet Simin Behbahani, A Cup of Sin is for soprano, clarinet, viola, piano, electric guitar and cello. The opening contemplative prelude with long held drone and spoken text leads to the longer “not-so-easy listening” dramatic middle movement encompassing sudden surprising loud crashes, vocal squeals and spoken words, concluding with a calm postlude.

Sabet successfully incorporates her life experiences in these unique compositions.