Editor's Corner

Bruce Surtees

I’m writing this the day after saying a fond farewell to a beloved colleague in the company of his family and a large cohort of friends from the music community. Bruce Surtees, best known in these pages for his contributions over two decades in the form of his column Old Wine in New Bottles, died peacefully on December 28 surrounded by family at Humber River Hospital after a brief illness. 

Bruce’s legacy began in 1961 when he and his wife Vivienne opened The Book Cellar in the basement of a music store on Yonge Street, a shop that would become a mainstay of Toronto’s literary industry for the next three decades. The store moved several times, eventually to its flagship location (there were several subsidiaries) across from the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville. With the bookstore thriving, Bruce branched out to embrace his first love, music, opening The Classical Record Shop, as the first tenant and cornerstone of the tony Hazelton Lanes complex. 

Bruce and I first crossed paths during my tenure at CJRT-FM in the mid-1990s where he was the co-host of Records in Review, first with the station’s music director, conductor Paul Robinson, and later with Toronto Star music critic William Littler. But it was not until I invited him to become part of the review team here that I really got to know Bruce. In July 2001, for the inauguration of the DISCoveries section, he wrote his first review for us under the banner “Worth Repeating: Older Recordings Worthy of Note,” writing about one of his favourite pieces, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, in an EMI reissue with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Janos Ferencsik. Some 75 stand-alone reviews followed over the next four years. April 2005 marked the beginning of a new chapter, when his Old Wine column became a monthly feature in the magazine. By the time of his final column in October 2023 Bruce had brought more than a dozen historic performances of Gurrelieder to our attention, along with countless opera sets, symphonic cycles and lieder recitals—nigh on 1,000 reviews, in many cases involving multiple discs. 

I don’t know how he found the time to listen to it all, but listen he did. 

Over the course of the last two decades, Bruce and his family became very special friends to my wife Sharon and me, as they attended chamber recitals by amateur groups I played cello in, under the auspices of University Settlement Music and Arts School, and joined us for musical gatherings in our backyard. One treasured memory is learning Taylor Swift’s Safe and Sound on my guitar in order to accompany Bruce’s granddaughter Alexis, but there are so many memories of Bruce and “his girls” that I will cherish forever. Especially the visits to Baycrest where his caregivers took such good care of Bruce over the past year (thank you Christine and Kristine!) making him comfortable and making us feel welcome. Bruce my friend, we miss you so.

Ives at 151

2024 marked both the sesquicentennial of the birth of Charles Ives in 1874, and 70 years since his death at the age of 80. I’ve spent the last month immersed in a set that would in happier days have fallen into the purview of Bruce Surtees’ Old Wine in New Bottles – although in this particular case perhaps Old Wine in Old Bottles would be more apt.

I say that because Charles Ives: The RCA and Columbia Album Anthology – Recordings for the Analog Era 1945-76 (Sony Classical 19658885962 amazon.ca/Charles-Ives-Columbia-Album-Anthology/dp/B0DBP3VXTH) is a 22-CD boxed set that consists of reissues of more than 30 vinyl records packaged in miniature reproductions of the original LP jackets. Although the booklet includes recording details and release dates for all the pieces and has a five-page introductory essay by Kevin Sherwin, the only actual program notes are those printed on those original LP covers which are reduced to a size nearly impossible to read even with a strong magnifying glass. And in cases where a CD contains material from more than one LP, only one cover is included, leaving some works with no notes at all. So, there’s my quibble out of the way right from the start. Other than that, I find it a marvellous collection. It spans three decades of recordings during which time Ives went from being perceived as an esoteric crackpot with his integration of marching band themes, popular tunes and hymns into his erstwhile “classical” compositions, to being a revered visionary, the epitome of the American composer.

I wrote last month about Ives’ Piano Sonata No.2 “Concord, Mass. 1840-1860” and its first champion John Kirkpatrick. Disc One contains Kirkpatrick’s historic 1948 recording of the sonata (made 11 years after he had given its first public performance), along with a brief movement from the first sonata. Disc Two features William Masselos’ 1951 78rpm recording of Piano Sonata No.1 which appeared on LP in 1953 (reissued in 1961). For comparison of the approaches and developments in understanding these extremely complicated works by the two performers over the period of two decades, Disc 8 presents Masselos’ 1967 revisiting of the first sonata and Disc 13 gives Kirkpatrick’s 1968 second recording of the “Concord.” Masselos’ 1951 recording is accompanied by Patricia Travers, and the disc also includes Otto Herz’s 10” recording of the Sonata for Violin and Piano No.2 from the same year. I’ll mention that this is the only one of Ives’ four violin sonatas included in this mostly comprehensive collection (Tone Roads No.1 is also conspicuous by its absence). 

That being said, there is a CD (Disc 16) of chamber music that includes a piano trio, A Set of Three Short Pieces for string quartet, four diverse pieces for piano quintet, his Largo for Violin, Clarinet and Piano, and another largo for violin and piano. The two numbered string quartets appear on Disc 10 performed by the Juilliard Quartet (1967), with the second of the two reappearing on the final collection’s final CD, performed by the Cleveland Quartet (1976), paired with Samuel Barber’s String Quartet in B Minor with its iconic molto adagio second movement. 

Ives’ vocal music is amply represented with a CD of songs (Disc 17) sung by soprano Evelyn Lear and baritone Thomas Stewart, and Disc 7 features choral works performed by the Gregg Smith Singers and the Columbia Chamber Orchestra, among others; a highlight of the disc for me is General William Booth Enters into Heaven featuring the gorgeous bass voice of Archie Drake. There is also a disc (18) of “Old Songs Deranged” which comprises familiar tunes refashioned for theatre orchestra with Ives’ usual cryptic wit. There are four recordings of Variations on “America” (same tune as God Save the King), one in the organ version with E. Power Biggs, and William Schuman’s arrangement for orchestra conducted by Morton Gould (1966), Eugene Ormandy (1969) and André Kostelanetz (1976). 

The bulk of the set, though, is devoted to Ives’ original music for orchestra. Ives wrote four numbered symphonies and another entitled A Symphony: New England Holidays. He also wrote three orchestral “sets” (the first of which is subtitled Three Places in New England), the surprisingly boisterous Robert Browning Overture, the mostly subdued and at times ghostly Central Park in the Dark, and The Unanswered Question, as well as a number of smaller works. Some of these orchestral works also include choral movements (Symphony No.4, Orchestral Set No.2, A Symphony: New England Holidays) and most of the pieces appear in multiple performances. Most notable among these are the Symphony No.4 in a 1968 performance under the baton of Leopold Stokowski with assistants José Serebrier and David Katz (because Stokowski felt it too difficult for one conductor to realize) and one from 1974 with Serebrier alone at the podium. Also notable: Symphony No.2 conducted by Leonard Bernstein in 1960 and Eugene Ormandy in 1974. The Bernstein recording is supplemented with a lecture by the maestro extolling the virtues (and difficulties) of Ives’ music.

I must say that listening to 25 hours of the quirky music of Ives is daunting and not for the faint of heart. To paraphrase the sometimes-cantankerous composer you need to be able to “stand up and take your dissonance like a man.” An invaluable tool I found for approaching the task is a book that was published in 2021, Listening to Charles Ives: Variations on his America by past president of the Charles Ives Society J. Peter Burkholder (Amadeus Press charlesives.org/listening-charles-ives-variations-his-america). It’s a marvellous resource, especially when read in conjunction with the listening tools on the Charles Ives Society website (charlesives.org). My only frustration came when I could find neither Piano Sonata No.1 nor Symphony No.4 in the detailed discussion of Ives’ works.

The same year that Burkholder published his book, the current president of the Ives Society Donald Berman published Charles E. Ives: Piano Studies - Shorter Works for Piano, Volume 2 - Ives Society Critical Edition (Peermusic Classical), and in 2024 Berman released what may be, thus far, the definitive recording of the “Concord” Sonata, Charles Ives - Sonata No.2; The St. Gaudens (Avie Records AV2678 avie-records.com/releases/ives-piano-sonata-no-2-concord-mass-1940-1860-•-the-st-gaudens-black-march).

I say”thus far” because it is likely there will never be such a thing as definitive where Concord is concerned. As I said in last month’s column, Ives continued to revise the work until 1947 when he published a supposedly definitive second edition after a decade of collaboration with John Kirkpatrick who had given the first public performance of the complete sonata in 1937 and would go on to record it in 1948. But the evolution of the sonata did not stop there, with scholars like Kirkpatrick and later Jay Gottlieb continuing to make “improvements” based on Ives’ innumerable sketches and notebooks. With the resources of the Charles Ives Society at his disposal, Berman has been able to draw on most of a century’s scholarship to foster his understanding of the iconic work and the result is stunning. He has chosen to pair the sonata with The St. Gaudens which is subtitled “Black March.” The music depicts marching soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th, one of the first Union armies of African Americans during the Civil War and one that suffered heavy casualties. In an annotation to the score Ives pays tribute to the regiment and says “Your country was made from you – images of a divine law carved in the shadow of a saddened heart.” Berman offers it as a prelude to the Concord, and it is an effective set-up for an outstanding disc. 

And these just in

In September 2007 I reviewed composer/pianist Frank Horvat’s first CD and said his “compositions are diverse enough that it’s hard to describe exactly what the disc is about. Sometimes bordering on the improvisations of Keith Jarrett (but without the audible humming), at moments reminiscent of boogie-woogie, at others dark ballad-like musings and occasional fugal passages, this is truly an eclectic mix.” Over almost two decades since then, with 22 releases in his discography (16 of which have been reviewed in DISCoveries), Horvat has persisted in his eclecticism and is still hard to pin down.

His latest release, More Rivers (navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6689), explores yet another side of his creativity in a tribute to Ann Southam inspired by her ebullient and rollicking series Rivers. Southam’s frequent collaborator Christina Petrowska Quilico is the pianist here, as she was so often for Southam’s pieces. Her discography, which numbers more than six dozen releases, includes Southam’s Rivers, Pond Life, Glass Houses, Glass Houses Revisited and Soundspinning, a collection of early works including my introduction to Southam’s music, Three in Blue, which was included in the Royal Conservatory of Music syllabus when I was studying piano more than half a century ago.

Horvat says that although “Southam’s work in the area of minimalist composition has been a big influence on my life […] More Rivers is not intended to be a sequel or continuation of Rivers, but my hope is that my own unique musical minimalist voice will be a tribute to this body of work that has impacted me so profoundly.” The set comprises seven pieces constructed with overlapping looping textures evoking water; murmuring, babbling, racing or gently flowing. A number of the movements are calm and meditative, reflecting in the composer’s words “a spiritual sentiment,” but there are also dynamic and forceful moments reminding us of the power of water. Petrowska Quilico rises to all the challenges, making even the most intricate passages sound effortless and natural.

In his programme note Horvat implores us to remember “Water is intrinsic to life. As living beings on this planet, it is one of our most important resources that requires our full respect and protection.” Amen to that.

Listen to 'Frank Horvat: More Rivers' Now in the Listening Room

Elsewhere in these pages you will find reviews of guitar-centric discs featuring “classical” composers Graham Flett and Tim Brady, and jazz guitarists Jocelyn Gould and the late Emily Remler. Each of those discs showcases, primarily, one style of music, albeit there is quite a range in each of the presentations. The next disc also focuses on guitar, but in this case it appears in many forms and contexts. ADJACENCE – new chamber works for guitar (new focus recordings FCR 423 danlippelguitar.bandcamp.com/album/adjacence) features the talents of Dan Lippel on traditional and microtonal classical guitars, electric guitar and electric bass in a variety of ensembles and settings.

The 2CD set features the work of a dozen living composers and includes pieces by the late Mario Davidovsky (Cantione Sine Textu for wordless soprano, clarinet/bass clarinet, flutes, guitar and bass) and Charles Wuorinen (Electric Quartet performed by Bodies Electric in which Lippel is joined by electric guitarists Oren Fader, John Chang and William Anderson). There are works for solo guitar, multi-tracked guitars, an unusual string trio comprised of guitar, viola and hammer dulcimer, a variety of duets such as piccolo and guitar and percussion and guitar, and a number of quartets of varied instrumentation.

One of my favourites is Tyshawn Sorey's homage to a Seattle-based pianist/composer. Titled Ode to Gust Burns it is an extended work scored for bassoon, guitar, piano and percussion, with the bassoon adding a particularly expressive note to the tribute. Another is Lippel’s own Utopian Prelude that opens the set, on which he plays both electric guitar and a micro-tonally tuned acoustic instrument. Ken Ueno’s Ghost Flowers is another extended work, composed for the unusual trio mentioned above. It begins with eerie string rubbing sounds from the guitar before droning viola and percussive dulcimer join the mix. The next ten minutes get busier and busier with overlapping textures and rhythms before subsiding gradually into gentle harmonics.

Peter Adriaansz’s Serenades II to IV (No.23) for electric guitar and electric bass ends the first disc, with Lippel playing both parts. Sidney Marquez Boquiren’s Five Prayers of Hope is performed by counter)induction, a quartet consisting of violin, viola, guitar and piano. The haunting opening prayer Beacon is juxtaposed with a variety of moods in the subsequent Bridges, Silence Breakers, Sanctuary and Home. The second disc ends with Dystopian Reprise which Lippel describes as “a fusion-inspired improvisation using the final minutes of Adriaansz’s Serenade IV as a canvas.”  Throughout the more than two hours of Adjacence Lippel and his colleagues kept me enthralled with the breadth and range of an instrument it is all too easy to take for granted.

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In closing I will mention one guilty pleasure of the past month. Although I certainly didn’t need another recording of Olivier Messiaen’s mammoth symphonic work, as it is one of favourites I was pleased to add Messiaen – Turangalîla Symphony (Deutsche Grammophon deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/messiaen-turangalla-nelsons-13655) to my collection. Featuring Yuja Wang, Cécile Lartigau and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Andris Nelsons, the recording offers all the excitement, scintillating effects and dynamic range that this exhilarating work requires. Another one for the ages! 

We invite submissions. CDs and DVDs should be sent to: DISCoveries, The WholeNote c/o Music Alive, The Centre for Social Innovation, 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4. Comments and digital releases are welcome at discoveries@thewholenote.com. 

I recently received Louise Bessette’s latest, Port of Call: New England with music by Charles Ives and Edward MacDowell (ATMA ACD2 2902 atmaclassique.com/en/product/port-of-call-new-england). The Ives is the extraordinary Piano Sonata No.2 “Concord, Mass 1840-1860” which he worked on for most of the first half of the 20th century, and the MacDowell is New England Idyls Op.62, a set of ten vignettes composed in 1902. I first heard the celebrated Montreal pianist in the early 1990s at George Weston Recital Hall at what is now the Meridian Centre for the Arts where she performed Olivier Messiaen’s stunning Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus from memory. I was enthralled. At the concert, I picked up her CBC Musica Viva recording of selections from the Vingt Regards and to my delight it also included Ives’ Concord Sonata. That was recorded live in concert back in 1987 and now, some 37 years later she has produced a studio recording of the Ives, “one of her all-time favourite works.” It’s one of mine too.

The Concord Sonata is a work that was very special to me in my formative years. I have spoken before in these pages about how my discovery of the Bartók string quartet cycle provided one of my earliest entries into the world of “contemporary” music, a kind of epiphany for me. Another revelatory experience was a lecture/demonstration at the U of T Faculty of Music in November 1974 by German pianist Peter Roggenkamp, whose examination and elucidation of the complex and freewheeling score of the Concord Sonata was another ear-opener. I was already enamoured of John Kirkpatrick’s 1968 Columbia recording of the work, but having it dissected under Roggenkamp’s microscope really brought home the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of Ives’ writing and left a lasting impression. 

In the first 20 seconds of the sonata, we hear Beethoven’s “fate” theme, the first four notes of the Fifth Symphony, which will reappear in myriad forms and guises throughout the four movements. As was his wont, Ives also incorporates/interpolates dozens of hymn tunes, marches, popular songs, fiddle tunes and his own brand of ragtime melodies into the classical piano sonata form. It is at times an extremely wild ride, but this is juxtaposed with gentle, almost transcendental sections. And transcendental is a key word here because Ives conceived the sonata as a depiction of figures of 19th-century American Transcendentalism, designating the movements Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts and Thoreau. 

To paraphrase the late Robert Fulford, publishing is a “necessary evil” that sadly stops the editing process. This was not the case for Ives, who worked on this sonata for 45 years beginning around the time of the First World War. After a decade of tinkering, he self-published a first edition in 1920 and sent out several hundred copies to performers, libraries, critics and anyone he could think of who might be interested. Few were, and he continued to revise Concord until 1947 when he published a supposedly definitive second edition after a decade of collaboration with Kirkpatrick who had given the first public performance of the complete sonata in 1937 and would go on to record it in 1948. 

But the evolution of the sonata did not stop there, with scholars like Kirkpatrick and later Jay Gottlieb, with whom Bessette worked, continuing to make “improvements” based on Ives’ innumerable sketches and notebooks. Most contemporary performances use the 1947 edition, but Kirkpatrick’s own second recording (1968) has craggier moments including, notably, Ives’ dissonant treatment of Hail Columbia, Gem of the Ocean in the latter portion of the piece. We can assume that through Gottlieb, Bessette also had access to Ives’ unpublished manuscripts. It’s a very special performance, muscular when Ives demands it – and demand it he does! – and calm, in fact tender as a breeze over Walden Pond, in the final moments. In that last movement we briefly hear the return of what Ives referred to as the “human-faith-melody” motif, this time played on the flute (Jeffrey Stonehouse). The brief addition of the flute is marked optional in the score, as is a quiet passage on the viola (Isaac Chalk) in the opening movement. Of the ten or so recordings I have in my collection, this is just the second to include these instruments, adding another element to the pleasure I found here.

After the raucous boisterousness of much of the Ives, it’s as if MacDowell’s New England is on another astral plane, although the quietude of Thoreau does lead nicely into the Idyls. With titles such as An Old Garden, In Deep Woods, Indian Idyl and From a Log Cabin, the brief pastoral portraits harken back to a gentler time, in contrast to Ives’ forward-looking approach. It is a bit funny though to hear a quiet echo of the Beethoven “fate” theme appear in the movement called Mid-winter, and the set ends on a lively note with The Joy of Autumn. Bessette is captivating throughout. 

I have also had several epiphanies when it comes to choral music, the first being an Angel LP recording of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos when I was still in high school. Some years later, as an amateur cellist on my first trip to CAMMAC’s Lake MacDonald summer program, I was sitting in the orchestra playing the pedal note and facing the conductor, when suddenly the choir at the back of the room burst into the glorious “Herr, unser Herrscher” opening phrase of Bach’s St. John Passion. I was gobsmacked! Several years later at the Elora Festival presentation of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc accompanied by a live performance of Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, again my soul soared at the beauty of a choral creation. 

There are moments in François Dompierre’s Requiem that take me back to the feeling of elation and exhilaration I experienced during those formative years. The performance features Montreal’s Orchestre FILMhamonique, Ensemble ArtChoral, soloists Myriam Leblanc, Andrew Haji and Geoffroy Salvas under the direction of Francis Choinière (LABE Records LABECD-24007 francoisdompierre.com/discographie). Dedicated to the memory of Dompierre’s mother Yolande and father Frédéric, the Latin texts of the gorgeous near hour-long work are taken from traditional liturgical verses: Introit-Kyrie; Dies Irae; Tuba Mirum; Lacrimosa; Hostias; Recordare; Sanctus; Benedictus; Agnus Dei; Lux Aeterna; Libera; In Paradisum. The varied movements range from dramatic and dynamic with full chorus and orchestra, to contemplative, even haunting, moments where the soloists are featured with sparse accompaniment. The musical language is mostly tonal and accessible, but there is enough range and contrast to satisfy even my somewhat jaded palette. The performance is nuanced and well balanced from the quietest moments to the occasional bombastic outbursts. The recording, made at la Maison symphonique de Montréal in January 2024, is outstanding. My one quibble is that the booklet, including Dompierre’s introduction and the translations of the Latin texts, is entirely in French. Fortunately, you can hear the composer talking about his Requiem with English subtitles here: youtube.com/watch?v=gFLPvPLux3E. 

I like it when my reading and my music making overlap. While working at CJRT-FM I read Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music and was intrigued by the narrator’s quest to find Beethoven’s String Quintet in C Minor Op.104, the composer’s rearrangement of an early piano trio. I set out on my own search for the music, fortunately not as onerous as the one described in the novel, and one of the highlights of my “career” as an amateur cellist was spending an afternoon with a quartet of friends under the tutelage of violinist extraordinaire Mark Fewer reading through the fabled work. That was a thrill only exceeded by the time I got to play Mozart flute quartets with Robert Aitken! (But enough about me, for now…).

Speaking of Mark Fewer, Alikeness features the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra Sinfonia under Fewer’s direction (Leaf Music LM 296 leaf-music.ca/music/lm296). Soprano Deantha Edmunds, a singer-songwriter who has the distinction of being the first Inuk professional classical singer, is active in the fields of opera, throat singing and drum dancing. The CD opens with Edmunds’ performance of her Angmalukisaa (“round” in Inuktut), four songs about personal connections arranged for the orchestra by Bill Brennan, Andrew Downing, Jeff Johnston and Robert Carli. This is followed by a “concerto grosso” with Fewer as violin soloist, Episodes by Serge Arcuri, written in 1998 for the Montreal Baroque Orchestra. While referencing the baroque origins of the form, Arcuri’s three movement work incorporates a romantic sensibility and some modern turns of phrase. Matt Brubeck’s solo work The Simple Life appears next in a lush arrangement by Downing for violin and strings, followed by the third movement of Carli’s “C” from his suite B-A-C-H, another contemplative work featuring Fewer’s violin. The title work, composed in 2015 by Jarosław Kapuściński, associate professor of composition at Stanford University, for the St. Lawrence String Quartet (ensemble in residence at Stanford) and percussionist Aiyun Huang. The mostly quiet work, a bit surprising for a percussion “concerto,” is heard here in an arrangement for Huang and string orchestra by Yoshiaki Onishi. The various percussive instruments are effectively juxtaposed with pizzicato accompaniment at times, and at others with lyrical lines or catch-me-if-you-can chase scenes with the strings. This very effective piece, lasting almost 25 minutes, completes a satisfying disc of unusual repertoire for chamber orchestra.

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(And here I am again…) Back in my days as a music programmer at CJRT, a favourite selection was Claude Bolling’s wonderful “chamber jazz” creation Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio as recorded by Bolling with Jean-Pierre Rampal. Somehow it escaped my notice that he had also written a Suite for Cello and Jazz Piano Trio composed and recorded in 1984, with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist. The Suite recently came to my attention on 1Q84, a new recording by Montreal cellist Sahara von Hattenberger (Odd Sound ODS-36 saharathecellist.com) who performs with pianist Joanne Kang, bassist Adrian Vedady and drummer Jim Doxas. Whereas in the original recording the rhythm section was confined to pretty much just that, in this new rendition the piano, bass and drums are given improvisatory sections in each of the six movements. While we expect it from jazz journeymen Vedady and Doxas, classical pianist Kang also shows herself right at home in “uncharted” waters and the end result is exhilarating.  

Regarding the unusual name of the album, although the booklet notes don’t go into it, the press release explains the significance of the title, borrowed from the well-known fantasy novel by Haruki Murakami set in 1984. The protagonist in the novel refers to the parallel universe in which she finds herself as 1Q84 (Q is pronounced the same as the number nine in Japanese). Van Hattenberger notes that 1984 was also the year Bolling completed his cello suite. 

The “parallel universe” in this case is the second CD of the set, where van Hattenberger performs new works for the same ensemble from composers Remy Le Boeuf, Malcolm Sailor and Jeffrey Fong. Le Boeuf has also contributed a quartet arrangement of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (a particularly fond earworm for me). The press release also states that Bolling’s famous crossover suite “acted as an antidote to the angst of the era. Massive inflation, the AIDS epidemic, financial unrest and overwhelming fear of and obsession with technology…” and goes on to suggest that “Van Hattenberger’s re-imagining […] maintains the same sense of joy and wit as the original […] This album is a welcome respite from the pressing darkness we often find ourselves in today.” I must say I have to agree as I write this in the days following the U.S. election. 

One caution: It seems there was a mix-up in the pressing of the second CD. It was intended to be heard in the order printed on the packaging (Sailor, Le Boeuf, Bush, Fong), but the actual order on the physical disc is Le Boeuf, Bush, Sailor, Fong, easy enough to re-program on a CD player. For digital purchase, the order of the tracks is correct. 

I don’t know where to start with this next one. Brandon Seabrook’s Object of Unknown Function (Pyroclastic Records PR 37 brandonseabrook.bandcamp.com/album/object-of-unknown-function) is unlike anything I’ve heard before (a few familiar sound fragments notwithstanding). The album is meant to convey the extreme physicality of Seabrook’s solo performances. It is a mixture of single instrumental lines supplemented by layers of similar or disparate instruments, juxtaposed with four-track cassette recordings from a variety of sources. The mix of instruments is somewhat unusual: an early 20th century six-string banjo, a tenor banjo played with a bow, an electric 12-string guitar and a classic Fender Telecaster. Six-string banjos are variously known as banjitars, guitjos and ganjos, Seabrook simply refers to his 1920 William O. Schmick instrument as a guitar banjo and it is tuned like a guitar. 

Tenor banjos, popular in the early 20th century in traditional jazz ensembles such as Dixieland bands, have four strings tuned in fifths like the viola and cello, or alternately in Chicago tuning, pitched like the four higher strings of a guitar. They are most often strummed rhythmically rather than plucked like their five-string counterparts, but Seabrook treats his differently, playing with a bow resulting in a sound similar to a Chinese erhu, or picking individual notes to create complex melodies. His Neptune 12-string electric guitar, built by Nashville luthier Jerry Jones in 1998, is naturally lush but Seabrook takes this to the nth degree when he layers four tracks of it along with seven bowed and two pluck tenor banjos in Melodic Incidents for an Irrational World producing a virtual wall of sound. 

Although there are moments of respite, such as the track Some Recanted Evening (one 12-string electric guitar) or the closer The Snow Falling, Falling (four bowed and one plucked tenor banjo), I must emphasize that this is not easy listening and at times borders on painful with its abrasive, ruthless energy and dissonant textures. That being said, I find myself drawn to it repeatedly, especially the above mentioned Irrational World  (which puts me in mind of the complex layers of acoustic instruments in the music of Paul Dolden), and in Unbalanced Love Portfolio, a contemplative solo for one guitar banjo. Not for the faint of heart, but a rousing ride for the more adventurous listener.  

I will close with a shout-out to an old friend, Sandy Bell, who was my counterpart as manager of Arraymusic for most of the 20 years I spent in the same capacity at New Music Concerts. Sandy has now retired from the heady world of arts administration to live the good life in rural Nova Scotia and concentrate on the things that matter. She has always been a singer, trained in choirs in her youth, but found her personal voice in the world of country music. While in Toronto she co-founded a band called The Wanted which played in such hallowed halls as the Gladstone Hotel and Cameron House. It seems her life’s dream was to produce a solo album and now she has done it. Break of Day – Songs for Colin (sandybellcreative.com/music) is a beautiful collection of original songs commemorating the life of her son who died tragically at the age of 20. There are some laments, including a chilling rendition of I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, the only cover version on the album, but the overall feeling is of hope and celebration. Sandy’s soprano voice with its country twang is complemented by a backing band of traditional fiddle, pedal and lap steel, acoustic and electric guitar, banjo, bass and drums, with harmony vocals by Kristin Cavoukian, Max Heineman and Sofia Harwell, all produced by Andrew Collins who also contributes mandocello lines. Although this may not be the album Bell began dreaming of before the death of Colin, it’s nevertheless a lovely fulfillment of that dream.

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We invite submissions. CDs and DVDs should be sent to: DISCoveries, The WholeNote c/o Music Alive, The Centre for Social Innovation, 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4. Comments and digital releases are welcome at discoveries@thewholenote.com.