Woven Dreams - Lara Driscoll

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On the face of it, with cold hard logic, the act of weaving is simple: you treadle a needle with yarn (weft) that passes evenly through even lengths of more yarn (warp) strung taut across a frame. If you’re skilled, you could do all manner of ornamental things with that weft as well. Applied to music, however, weaving is altogether more daunting, especially when your aim is to become a weaver of dreams.

Whether Lara Driscoll was challenged in making Woven Dreams, however, seems to be a proverbial moot point. This is truly outstanding music that tells wordless stories about living things (Siblings and Trespassers) conjuring each with humour and detail; it sketches and paints moving pictures and landscapes with vivid colour and texture (Black Dog Skirts Away and Isfahan) and does so much more, seemingly enchantingly, by manipulating the black and white keys of the piano, which is then woven into bass lines and dappled with percussion colours.

Having sat mesmerized through it all, Driscoll, together with Paul Rushka (bass) and Dave Laing (drums), will have done for you just what they did for me: imprinted upon your mind’s eye something of a magical, seemingly unending dreamscape. In sheer colour and variety, in the depth of its characterization and the exceptional range and refinement of her pianism, Driscoll imparts an extraordinary bigness to this music that most pianists would die to achieve. This is music evoked as few pianists can. 

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