Eric Lyon: Giga Concerto
String Noise; Greg Saunier; International Contemporary Ensemble
New Focus Recordings FCR293 (newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue) 

Frenetic energy and whirling pastiche permeate throughout Eric Lyon’s Giga Concerto. Performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with guest soloists, this six-movement work is certainly a fun ride. The composer notes that the music of Brahms is decidedly “gloomy” and aims to avoid this attribute in his own music. The Giga Concerto does exactly that: the obvious polar opposite of gloom. The listener is treated to pure giddiness as Lyon enjoys many jaunty moments in each movement of the piece. The joviality of mood is unrelenting with many sarcastic string slides and punchy percussive romps. This release is truly a carnival dance in a not-to-distant land. The International Contemporary Ensemble, soloists Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris (also known as the duo String Noise) and percussionist Greg Saunier execute the piece with supreme musicianship and technical mastery. The Giga Concerto is wonderfully buoyant – the perfect listen on a gloomy day.

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113 Composers Collective – Resistance/Resonance
Duo Gelland
New Focus Recordings FCR291 (newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue) 

Duo Gelland is comprised of virtuoso violinists Cecilia and Martin Gelland. In their nearly 30-year history, the duo continues to champion contemporary music to a seemingly inexhaustible degree. In the duo’s latest release titled Resistance/Resonance, members of the 133 Composers Collective were commissioned to provide the six pieces on the album.

Each piece delivers a wide-ranging approach to the violin duet from a noise-based aesthetic to shimmering landscapes produced by string harmonics. Jeremy Wagner’s Oberleitung is a jagged study in electric gestures. Michael Duffy offers contrast with airy tones and gentle threads. The nostalgia-laden Autochrome Lumière by Joshua Musikantow offers a more melodic approach matched with prickly taps of the bow on the instruments. Sam Krahn’s piece, the title track, is an engaging juxtaposition of different characters that provide interesting contrast and occasional togetherness. Difficult Ferns by Adam Zahller is a decidedly microtonal work filled with unstable and phantom imagery. The last track on the disc, cistern . anechoic . sonolucent by Tiffany M. Skidmore, creates a distant shadow aura amid slow-moving whispers – a piece that is magnificent in its understated quality. 

Duo Gelland has produced yet another astounding example of their talents, and they handle each piece with an expressive and technical mastery that is not to be missed.

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Caeli
Bára Gísladóttir; Skúli Sverrisson
Sono Luminus SLE 70020 (sonoluminus.com)

The duo of Icelandic bass players Bára Gísladóttir and Skúli Sverrisson has documented their finely tuned working relationship with Caeli. Deep explorations of sounds from Gísladóttir’s double bass are sculpted by Sverrisson’s skillful mastery of the electric version of the instrument, shaded by the subtle blues and greys of his electronics. Long expansive bowed scrapes are pushed to the edge, just hanging on before bubbling over to the world of overtones and edgy depths of deep space. 

This music is definitely not for everyone, but I found the work expressive and beautiful. More along the lines of a Deep Listening experience, it is enigmatically shy of information either on the album or the press kit, so I am going to assume they are improvisations curated and finely edited to their current state. Caeli is exquisite in its expression of layered textural nuances created between the partnership of the acoustic double bass and the electric bass and processing. This is an album that is at times darkly overbearing while simultaneously free and endless; it is without borders, almost frightening in the way one might dream about falling off the edge of a flat Earth or losing sight of the mothership while floating in space. The length of the double album only enhances the endlessness. 

With each track delicately balanced and compositionally complete, this is an album for those who are into darkly cinematic ambient sounds. Put on some good headphones, sit in the dark and enjoy the ride.

Gunnar Andreas Kristinsson – Moonbow
Siggi String Quartet; CAPUT Ensemble; Duo Harpverk
Sono Luminus DSL-92246 (sonoluminus.com)

Who’s up for some sombre Nordic music? Icelandic composer Gunnar Andreas Kristinsson’s moody compilation matches the colour palette on the CD jacket: black, white and muted earth tones. Essentially this is all chamber music, even the opening cut, Sisyfos, a concerto for clarinet and small orchestra, featuring Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson with the CAPUT Ensemble. Vilhálmsson has a wildly unconventional sound and an impressive technical range. Portraying the protagonist in the myth, his part struggles against the accompaniment: descending scales, all at varying speeds and tonalities. The soloist rolls phrase after phrase up this sonic mountainside. 

Based on an Icelandic folk song, Patterns IIb is quite playful by comparison, but it’s still serious play. Reworked from its original scoring, Kristinsson replaced the gamelan ensemble with three mallet instruments, alongside the original violin and bass clarinet.

Moonbow, for string quartet, depicts the meteorological phenomenon of an arc surrounding the moon. The opening phrases purport to mirror the arc’s shape; the musical ideas fragment and spin. Kristinsson means to depict the experience of seeing this nocturnal arc-en-ciel; one might be dreaming of flying in ever-narrowing circles upwards, reaching for the thing, then waking suddenly to silence.

Mathematical influence reappears in PASaCAgLiaB, originally a duo for harp and percussion with bass clarinet added later. Within the Baroque form, Kristinsson references the numeric pattern of Pascal’s triangle. A slow sad dance grows more and more manic, before reverting to resigned calm. It’ll take a few more listens before I can detect either a passacaglia format or a triangle.

Roots, the final work in three movements for chamber orchestra, reacquaints one with an old friend, the overtone series. It gets pretty funky, especially the third bit. Actually left me smiling!

Archetypes
Third Coast Percussion; Sérgio & Clarice Assad
Cedille CDR 90000 201 (cedillerecords.org)

For 15 years, Grammy Award-winning Third Coast Percussion has been praised for the “rare power” (The Washington Post) of its records filled with “an inspirational sense of fun and curiosity” (Minnesota Star-Tribune). The Chicago-based quartet currently serves as ensemble-in-residence at Denison University. 

On Archetypes Third Coast has invited celebrated Brazilian guitarist Sérgio Assad and his vocalist/composer/pianist daughter Clarice Assad to collaborate on an album with an intriguing conceit: to conjure up a dozen contrasting universal human archetypes in music. In 12 movements, each from three to just over five minutes, archetypal figures such as magician, jester, rebel, lover, hero and explorer take their turn at the thematic centre. 

Instrumentally and stylistically the music comfortably inhabits a double frame: contemporary percussion chamber music is infused with harmonically adventurous Latin jazz, acoustic guitar and occasional vocalise. The results of this genuine collaboration can be extraordinary. Archetypes IV:  The Lover for instance, in its restless and surprising modulations, rippling guitar and marimba arpeggios counterpointed by spare vibraphone and piano melodies floating above, seems to be reaching for something just beyond reach.

The 11 other movements evoke other moods and effects, characterized by innovative arrangements and brilliant playing. Composed by Sérgio, Clarice, members of Third Coast, or jointly, the suite flows organically, exuding musical confidence and virtuosity.

With its mix of classical and jazz elements, the 20th-century music fusion term  Archetypes is an unexpectedly delightful musical discovery.

Curtis K. Hughes – Tulpa
Boston Percussion Group; Sentient Robots; Various Artists
New Focus Recordings FCR298 (newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue) 

Curtis K. Hughes’ music is redolent of mystery, wit and adventure, set in a world that is both concrete and abstract. Its harmolodic and rhythmic architecture is expressive, and because it is inspired by the humanity around him (real and imagined) it is never still and dances in graceful movements that are often not simply balletic, but also dizzying.

The repertoire on Tulpa adds another exciting layer to the character of Hughes’ musical oeuvre, being as it is, evocative of a kind of otherworldly erudition. The title of every work represented here comes not only with an aura of rhythmic mystery but always leads the listener to a luminous musical world, often dappled with many-splendoured tone-textures. 

Beginning with the solitary majesty of flagrant, we soon find ourselves surrounded by a whole battery of percussion colourists nestling cheek by jowl in antechamber. But Hughes, being a ubiquitous master of surprise, constantly switches tonal and structural gears in the music that follows. 

Percussion instruments give way to the gravitas of the bass clarinet and moaning cellos; back again to the rich woody tones of the clarinet and piano before he turns his attention – and most definitely ours as well – to a large, grander palette in the four-part suite, tulpa. Through this, the album’s apogee, Hughes demonstrates an uncommon character which is inward looking and outward bound, woven together with melodic, harmonic and rhythmical elements, and unexpected colours and patterns sweeping through everything musical.

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A Gentle Notion
Hanick Hawley Duo
Il Pirata Records (ilpiratarecords.com/catalog-1) 

A Gentle Notion, the title work for this disc by clarinetist Richard Hawley and pianist Conor Hanick, is a short meditation by Jennifer Higdon. It’s sweetly tonal and at two minutes plus, sweetly brief as well. It sets the stage for all the works on this release. 

The duo open with Aaron Copland’s transcription of his Violin Sonata, written in what Copland refers to as his “plain period,” the early 1940s. I enjoyed wrestling with the piece myself, but to my mind it belongs on the stack of transcriptions more elegant in ideal than action: Schubert’s Arpeggione, the Franck Sonata for Violin (or flute?) and the Prokofiev Sonata for Flute (or violin?). Copland transposed it down a major third to ease high tessitura, making better use of the clarinet’s baritone voice; I hear Hawley suffer some difficulty preventing pitch from rising in the middle range, a forgivable but nagging flaw. There are also passages that are more suited to the bow than the tongue. 

Higdon’s two-movement Sonata, originally for viola, is a better fit for clarinet, maintaining the gentle mood of the title track in the opening of the first movement, and never straying far into the upper range, even as the mood darkens. The second movement has pop and energy; to my ear Higdon shows some of the tonal style of Hindemith. 

Hawley is not a showy player; elegance and understatement mark his performances. An instance of flutter tonguing in the Clarinet Sonata by Pierre Jalbert is subtle, even tidy. Joan Tower’s Wings for solo clarinet is a tour-de-force; Hawley nails it. His sound is icy smooth up high, and warm in the chalumeau. His musicality is honest and reliable. Hanick meets him on an equal footing; the duo plays with verve and excellent communication.

Scott Wollschleger – Dark Days
Karl Larson
New Focus Recordings FCR287 (newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue) 

“Spells of hushed, cryptic beauty… free-floating grace.” So wrote Alex Ross in The New Yorker about the music of Brooklyn-based Scott Wollschleger (b.1980). The ten pieces on this CD, dating from 2007 to 2020, share with the stylistically very different piano works of Erik Satie austere economies of means, eschewing virtuosic displays and overt emotionalism, yet achieving remarkably individual and expressive results.

The opening Dark Days, prophetically composed in January 2017 during Trump’s inauguration, appropriately rumbles and grumbles in the piano’s lowest register. Shifting to the treble, the diaphanous Tiny Oblivion reflects what Wollschleger calls “black humour acceptance [of] the fact that our ultimate fate is to die and then eventually to turn into particles that will forever break down into smaller particles…”

Music without Metaphor, Blue Inscription and Lyric Fragment are slow, sombre, haltingly paced, directionless peregrinations. In Brontal Nos.2, 6 and 11, single notes intermittently drip or spray; occasionally, chords splash. (Brontal: a coined word Wollschleger employs for “discovery within the unfamiliar.”) Finally, Secret Machine Nos.4 and 6 are surprisingly cheerful, their shimmering trills and rippling arpeggios marking the CD’s gradual emergence from the “dark days.”

In his detailed booklet notes, pianist Karl Larson describes Wollschleger’s synaesthetic pairing of different harmonies with specific visual colours; non-synaesthetic listeners must content themselves with the aural colours of Wollschleger’s tenebrous keyboard palette.

Wollschleger’s enigmatic compositions are ideal accompaniments for sipping wine on a late wintry evening, but you shouldn’t wait for winter to hear them!

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Montreal
Holly Cole Trio
Rumpus Room Records 8088910067 (hollycole.com)

Recorded live during a four-day stint at the intimate Lion d’Or during the 2019 Festival International de Jazz, Montreal is a succinct six tracks. I don’t know if it’s because my attention span has deteriorated in this information-overloaded age we live in, but I quite enjoyed this shorter album size.

I also enjoyed the energy that a live performance lends. So although the majority of the tracks are Cole classics that most fans will have heard before, these renditions have slight differences from the studio versions as well as a unique presence and spontaneity that’s difficult to achieve in studio. The sound recording is so good (thanks to Ken Friesen) that you might not even know it’s live until the appreciative audience makes its presence felt.

Cole is in top form, doing what she does best: delivering great songs with style, wit and heart, starting with the atmospheric Whatever Lola Wants. A singer’s dream, Cole’s longtime bandmates – Aaron Davis, piano, David Piltch, bass, Davide DiRenzo, drums and John Johnson, woodwinds – deliver their usual imaginative, tasteful support. Each band member has a chance to shine – Piltch on the stripped down Little Boy Blue, a playful duet with just bass and voice. Davis solos beautifully on Girl Talk and Talk To Me Baby and Johnson’s evocative clarinet playing strikes just the right note on You’ve Got a Secret.

Celebrations!
Swing Shift Big Band; Jackie Richardson; Larisa Renėe; Dave Statham
Palais Records SSBB2021CD (swingshiftbigband.com)

The homegrown, nationally acclaimed Swing Shift Big Band has been operating for 25 years and in these tough times has released a wonderful album full of all-time favourites from the genre that are sure to get any listener toe tapping right along. Led by multi-instrumentalist Jim John, through interesting and unique arrangements of well-known pieces, the band does a great job of breathing new life into a genre that can often get pushed slightly to the background. The listener is taken on a time-travelling journey of sorts, one that is just the perfect getaway paired with warmer weather and quickly approaching summer. 

The record starts off with a bossa nova classic Summer Samba, a sultry and rhythmic piece with scintillating solos by tenor saxophonist and musical director Jeff Pighin, as well as lead trombonist Rob Williams. Compared to the original, Swing Shift’s version may even become the preference for some due to the organ melody being replaced by a softer and mellower combination of trumpets, alto saxophones and trombones in this rendition. In Here’s to Life, renowned vocalist Jackie Richardson lends her rich and soulful voice to bring a melodious jazz ballad to new heights; the subtle yet poignant big band accompaniment pairing perfectly with her timbre. For any jazz fans looking to renew their interest in the big band subgenre or for new listeners alike, this album is a definite must.

We Want All the Same Things
Erin Propp; Larry Roy
Chronograph Records CR-079 (erinpropp.com)

From the first downbeat of this fine recording, the listener is immediately drawn into Erin Propp and Larry Roy’s refreshing blend of folk and jazz, a bright world chock-full of catchy melodies, thoughtful lyrics and great musicianship. On this collection of 12 songs, mostly originals, the Winnipeg-based singer highlights her ongoing collaboration with Roy, one of Canada’s finest guitar players. The creative partnership has been a fruitful one, encompassing their 2012 Juno-nominated album Courage, My Love, as well as performances with the Winnipeg Symphony.

On this new recording, the duo continue to develop and deepen their artistry. Highlight tracks such as Farther On, The Light and Give Me More feature some exemplary songwriting, with Propp’s thoughtful, highly personal singing and lyrics matched alongside Roy’s distinctive arranging and harmonic approach. 

Propp’s versatility and strong affinity with the music of Brazil and Brazilian songstress Luciana Souza is highlighted on Recomeçar, a memorable melody composed by Humberto Piccoli. She also displays great vocal and emotional range on her interpretation of Hoagy Carmichael’s The Nearness of You. When Propp offers her highly individual take on this much-covered American Songbook standard, it is as if she is pausing to savour every syllable and nuance of the song. It takes a great singer to pull something like this off on such a high musical level.

Special mention also goes to the incredible crew of supporting musicians, Larnell Lewis, Mike Downes, Julian Bradford and Will Bonness. Hopefully this fine recording will help to give Propp and Roy the wider recognition they so deserve.

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Ocelot
Yuma Uesaka; Cat Toren; Colin Hinton
557 Records 5859 (557records.com) 

With its gorgeous sweeping melodies and fine ensemble communication, this album was juicy listening from start to finish. Sax/clarinet player Yuma Uesaka, Canadian pianist Cat Toren and drummer/percussionist Colin Hinton deliver a finely arced album, each track a diverse departure from the last but cohesive as a whole. Well known as individual jazz improvisers around the New York scene, the trio has gelled to create this gorgeous debut album, co-composed by the group, a culmination of a year’s worth of composing, rehearsing and touring, including a 2019 residency that allowed them to deepen their chemistry and work on the material for the album. This is an ensemble cast; three skilled players and improvisers whose trust in each other shows in the delicate patience and fine balance throughout the album. 

It’s impossible to name a favourite track. Daimon ll is a solid opening, with melodic and deep, pulsating support for the soaring sax. The broadly sweeping Factum is a great listen, compositionally perfect and beautifully played, while Post is mesmerizing and fun. Anemone is tightly constructed and finely mixed; Iterations shows the group blowing off steam. Sequestration is contemplative and spacious, with stunning sonorities, and Crocus leads us to a beautiful closing. 

Throughout the album, Hinton’s percussion never overpowers the other two, showing a fine sense of balance that manages to never sound held back. All three players show a remarkable patience for the natural expansion of the melodic content. 

This vibrant trio delivers an authentic and welcome breath of fresh air at the beginning of what will hopefully be a long and fruitful flight.

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Uncharted
Hector Quartet
Independent hec001-cd (hectorquartet.com)

Hector consists of saxophonist Chris Gale, guitarist Ted Quinlan, keyboardist Jeff McLeod and drummer Chris Wallace. These are some of the most prolific and esteemed musicians in the Toronto scene and the results resemble something one might hear in the casual setting of a jazz club, albeit during a particularly loose and inspired gig. There is that signature flavour of guitar-driven funk, mixed with the stylistic versatility enabled by McLeod’s lyrical organ accompaniment, giving way to six tracks of truly impeccable jamming. One thing that stands out about Hector is how egoless the project is. Nobody dominates the soloing order, no force ever overwhelms the others, and most significantly, every compositional voice is heard.

Quinlan’s Building 8 is the perfect opener, enticing the listener by constantly taking harmonic left turns while managing to intangibly weave a melody through, capturing the intuitive enchantment of a lost standard. McLeod’s soulful 590 Blues showcases the band’s astonishing familiarity with the pocket, while McLeod’s solo sounds poised and comfortable, as if he were playing in his own home. What remains of the tracklist creates a beautiful contrast of moods, alternating between the richly melodious compositional style of Gale and the unflinchingly forceful grooves of Wallace. All the tunes are performed with equal respect, exertion and relish by everyone involved. For a debut album, Uncharted sounds a lot like the product of a true ensemble, one that has found its collective voice.

O Sole Mio – Music from the Motherland
Cory Weeds; Eric Alexander; Mike LeDonne; Peter Bernstein; Joe Farnsworth
Cellar Music CM100619 (cellarlive.com)

For years, the venerable New York uptown jazz bôite Smoke featured Mike LeDonne on B3 Hammond organ, along with his funkadelic ensemble, the Groover Quartet. Canada’s own Cory Weeds – who is not only a fine alto saxophonist, but the founder of Cellar Records (a multiple award-winning, international jazz label) – was also long hip to this soulful group and began an extended performance and recording relationship with these fine musicians that continues to this day. Produced by Weeds and LeDonne and featuring Weeds on alto saxophone, Eric Alexander on tenor sax, LeDonne on B3, Peter Bernstein on guitar and Joe Farnsworth on drums, this exceptional new recording is a jazzy celebration of the Italian-American songbook, rife with traditional compositions, an offering from iconic jazz bassist Paul Chambers and cinematic hits from Henry Mancini and Nino Rota.

Not only can these guys groove, but they’re an incendiary device, as typified by a swing-infused O Sole Mio, featuring exquisite sax work from Weeds and Alexander. Mancini’s film noirish Mr. Lucky instigates Alexander’s bobs and weaves, while Pat Martino’s bebop anthem On the Stairs showcases pumpitude from all five members of the band.  

A deep, groove-infested Estate allows Weeds to shine – passing through each sultry emotional permutation. Also brilliant are Torna a Surriento, featuring the incredible Bernstein on guitar, with contributions from Alexander on tenor. A real standout is the funky-cool Moody Blues, which transports the band to California’s West Coast in the 1950s. Consummate keyboardist LeDonne is the star here – bringing to mind all of the greats of the B3, while being derivative of none. The closer, Chambers’ Capricci di Camere (Whims of Chambers) is pure, joyous boplicity!

What Tomorrow Brings
Alyssa Allgood
Cellar Music CM012121 (cellarlive.com/collections/all)

With this, just her third studio recording, Alyssa Allgood declares that she is comfortable in her own vocal skin and has also raised her game to become an artist of the first order. On What Tomorrow Brings she shapes the lyrics of these songs with élan, intelligence and passionate engagement, infusing fluid melodies with both a storyteller’s sense of detail and a dramatist’s sense of theatricality. 

The chosen repertoire features beautifully crafted arrangements of beguiling variety and sensuousness, expertly voiced in Allgood’s lovingly caressed phrasing. Listening to the way in which she seductively bends the notes in There Are Such Things and Memories, and how she sculpts the sustained inventions of Bridges, it’s clear that there’s not a single semiquaver of these melodies that hasn’t been fastidiously considered. Moreover – speaking of theatricality – Allgood turns into a quite riveting siren as she voices the character in Noel Coward’s Mad About The Boy, all but transforming what is usually a playful song into something darkly dramatic.

Allgood’s trio – guitarist Mike Allemana, bassist Dennis Carroll and drummer George Fludas – is completely attuned to her vision and artistry. The performances of each of the musicians melt eloquently into the vocalist’s highly expressive melodic stories. Melodies are intimately woven into filigreed lines from Allemana’s guitar, echoed in the rhythmic musicality of Carroll’s bass and Fludas’ drums. The music soars throughout, ending in Passing Glance, a powerful climax to this memorable album.