Modern and Contemporary

Victor Marquez-Barrios: The Moments Between - Various Artists

Victor Marquez-Barrios – The Moments Between
Various Artists
Blue Griffin BGR651 (bluegriffin.com/cd-catalog/p/the-moments-between-victor-marquez-barrios?rq=the%20moments%20betw)

I like a disc that neither clamours for your attention nor sends you out of the room seeking peace. Therefore, I like the music of Victor Marquez-Barrios as represented here on The Moments Between, although I exclude, for private reasons, the opening and title track for soprano and bass clarinets. I have grown allergic to the sound of my own instrument, even while I recognize the two performers, Jesse Krebs and Xin Gao, are just fine. Once past my own pain, I truly enjoy the diverse chamber works of the collection. The titles date from 2000 through 2022, so all fairly recent. Marquez-Barrios has a great understanding of a range of instruments, and demonstrates his own prowess on guitar on Introspección, a duet with cello, here played with poise and aplomb by Yolena Orea.

Other instruments, all played so well, but too many to note every name: flugelhorn, trombone, vibes, saxophone, string quartet and English horn, played by Elaine Aubuchon who gets special mention because she’s darned good and I especially liked Waltz for Kyle (2022).

It would be fair to classify the composer as neo-Romantic if such designations still have meaning. Post-modernism allows artists to simply do what comes, I think, and only when they seem driven by an agenda beyond expressing their own ideas and voice and calling do I close up my ears and move on. The last cut on the disc, The Visitor (2022), is a collaborative work, Rafael Vera sharing writing credits. Perhaps that explains why it is the most overtly “contemporary” or exploratory (or, depending on your taste, the most difficult).

Canadian Suite Celebrations - Duo Majoya

Canadian Suite Celebrations
Duo Majoya
Centrediscs CMCCD 32423 (cmccanada.org/shop/cmccd-32423)

The talents of five veteran Canadian keyboardists combine in listener-friendly music for the unusual pairing of piano and organ, championed by Edmonton-based Duo Majoya – pianist Joachim Segger and organist Marnie Giesbrecht, both now retired from university posts in Edmonton.

From 1969 to 2021, Denis Bédard (b.Quebec City 1950) served as a church organist in Quebec and Vancouver. His charming five-minute Capriccio (2007) made me smile. The four brief movements of his Duet Suite (1999) are, in turn, dramatic, playful, stately-ceremonial and celebratory. Bédard’s 27-minute Grande Suite (2016) is, by far, the CD’s longest work. Overture moves from solemnity to cheerfulness. Evocation (Des prairies canadiennes) is a haunting soundscape of hushed repeated piano arpeggios over moody organ chords. Ritournelle is a piquant folk dance, Dialogue an echoing children’s song, Intermezzo a hesitant waltz, followed by the mock-courtly Menuet and jubilant Marche.

Pianist-organist Ruth Watson Henderson (b.Toronto 1932) was, for many years, accompanist for the Festival Singers and Toronto Children’s Chorus, composing over 200 choral pieces. Her Suite (2011) is in four brief movements – a portentous Prelude, gentle Intermezzo, a searching, ambulating Romance and rollicking Dance.

In 1976, Jacobus Kloppers (b.1937) left his native South Africa, settling in Edmonton where he chaired Kings College’s music department (1979-2005), also teaching organ at the University of Alberta. In The Last Rose of Summer – Reminiscences in Autumn (2011), he quotes the title song in music surging with sentiment, ending in an aura of quiet nostalgia.

Listen to 'Canadian Suite Celebrations' Now in the Listening Room

Games of the Night Wind: 12 Nocturnes by David Jaeger - Christina Petrowska Quilico

Games of the Night Wind – 12 Nocturnes by David Jaeger
Christina Petrowska Quilico
Navona Records nv6630 (navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6630)

The celebrated Canadian pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico has collaborated with composer and producer David Jaeger on a number of recordings over many decades. Games of the Night Wind is their third on the Navona Records imprint alone. The devotion of the pianist to the composer’s music is, predictably, personal. It speaks of long acquaintance with these works on offer, the 12 Nocturnes by Jaeger, and you need only sample the first set of four to hear how lovingly the pianist caresses the music that gives it a unique raptness.

While the 12 Nocturnes may be the centrepiece of the recording, particularly the tenth which lends the album its name, and the other nocturnes are spectacular as well. For example, the enormously uplifting second, A Blessing, the sixth, Forget the Day and the ninth Lament for the People of Ukraine, are all especially impactful. With Jaeger’s nocturnes we are treated to the composer’s sublime grasp of the form, and enthralled by Petrowska Quilico’s performance.

Her treatment of the other pieces is absolutely scintillating too. Toru Takemitsu’s Les Yeux Clos is other-worldly-ethereal, and Henryk Górecki’s Intermezzo is long-limbed and beautiful. Meanwhile Górecki’s superb, crepuscular Lullaby is evocative (as an angular contrafact) of Mozart’s Twelve Variations on Ah vous dirai-je, Maman, albeit darker in colour.

Jaeger also gets high marks as session producer of this recording.

A Walk to Meryton - Made by Musicbots and Arne Eigenfeldt

A Walk to Meryton
Made by Musicbots and Arne Eigenfeldt
Redshift Records TK533 (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com)

North Vancouver-based composer Arne Eigenfeldt has worked with Artificial Intelligence since the1980s. His musical tool creation Musebots is a modular, interactive system which generates countless musical environments like washes, percussive sounds, held notes, intervals and low to high pitches. Ten pieces with video co-written and generated by Musebots feature genres like contemporary music, jazz, spoken word and electronics. Live human performers John Korsrud (trumpet, flugelhorn), Meredith Bates (violin), Jon Bentley (soprano & tenor saxophones) and Barbara Adler (text/reading) were recorded then overlaid to the Musebots tracks. Each musician was given a generated score with melodies, harmonic progressions and suggestions where to improvise. Adler wrote her spoken texts based on her conversations with Eigenfeldt about walking, Jane Austin, musebots and internal dialogs.

Room for a Moment features tonal, accessible lyricism like electronic clicks, held notes and ringing bell sounds between phrases. Background spoken words and violin mix well to closing comforting sound. Fit As You Are opens with a repeated walking and exercising drum beat. Then a bit slower with intervals and held notes. Spoken word articulation at times matches the generated rhythms. Trumpet and sax fit well but are too soft. In Pleasure to Suffer grim low held notes support higher lines of spoken word, alternating bell like sounds and held notes. Abrupt saxophone trills add interest.

I am SO surprised and excited by this Musebots generated music. Yes, it still has that “familiar TV/film computer sound” yet Musebot’s lush harmonic tonal to atonal melodies, washes and percussive rhythms combine perfectly with the human performers.

Vanessa Marcoux: Cendres - Vanessa Marcoux; Marie-Christine Poirier; Strings

Vanessa Marcoux – Cendres
Vanessa Marcoux; Marie-Christine Poirier; Strings
Independent (youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m8IULQX12yWqxLhPw-lHI63QGXkhcnHpQ)

This CD comes without any information about Vanessa Marcoux other than that she’s the violin soloist in her own compositions, performing with pianist Marie-Christine Poirier, also heard here, as Duo Cordelia. Also lacking, other than the movement titles, are any descriptions of the music. Searching online, I learned that she’s Québecoise, was born in 1986, studied composition with Ana Sokolović, was a member of the Juno-nominated klezmer band Oktopus and scored the film adaptation of Gabrielle Roy’s novel La riviėre sans repos.

At 28 minutes, Marcoux’s arrangement for violin, piano and string ensemble of her Violin Sonata dominates the disc. In Lento, the violin wails in desperation. The discordant tango of La porte entrebâillėe grows steadily faster and wilder. Improvisation – Le déroute is an extended, vehement solo cadenza. Tempo rubato’s lyricism is tinged with regret; the concluding Molto Aggressivo defines itself.

Petite Suite Aquatique is in two movements. Aquarium features long-lined, plaintive violin melodies over abrupt piano rhythms. In Deep Blue Saloon, a Romany-flavoured dance is followed by honky-tonk ragtime, ending raucously. According to the only description by Marcoux I could find online, it represents “a bar frequented by the motley fauna of the deep sea who have come to witness the burlesque stripping of a wanton octopus.” (!)

The densely-scored Cendres for string quintet begins with agitated propulsion before subsiding to restless songfulness. Although the CD lasts only 48 minutes, Marcoux’s intensely gripping, tempestuous music left me completely satisfied.

Cartografia del Mar - Andre Cabráin; Pedro Mateo Ganzález

Cartografia del Mar
Andre Cabráin; Pedro Mateo Ganzález
Eudora Records EUD-SAC-2307 (eudorarecords.com)

The sea, like amniotic fluid, has the power to join us all, as creatures of consciousness, through the power of music. Cartografia Del Mar (A Map of the Sea) is a deeply stirring international and intergenerational program presented here by accomplished flutist (and Scotsman) Andre Cebrián and eminent classical guitarist (and Spaniard) Pedro Mateo González. The album’s, suites and stand-alone compositions are from Astor Piazzolla, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Toru Takemitsu, Robert Beaser, Leo Brouwer and Feliu Gasull.

Up first is Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango. Lyrical and pungent, heavy with the aroma of Argentinian night life through the past century, this magnificent suite has been brilliantly re-imagined by Cebrián and González. In the first movement, Bordel 1900, the duo explores the bordello as the instigator of the 20th century roots of tango. Light, airy, joyous are all descriptive of this movement. Coy, jejune passages are interspersed with waves of intimacy and pungent secrets as Cambrián and González traverse intrigues of the Buenos Aires night like a single-celled organism.

Italian icon Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Sonatina Op.205 is rendered here with exquisite care and skill by both artists, and captures every nuance of this gorgeous, rhythmically varied suite, rife with nearly unbearable beauty. Japanese composer Takemitsu contributes his masterful work, Toward the Sea. In the first movement, The Night, the listener’s skin tingles… all senses are open and awash with an eerie feeling of unseen presences, swathed in mystery… lower flute tones evoke a feeling of isolation, while the guitar is the veritable vapor on which the flute floats. Also of note is the “Mountain Songs” suite by New England-born Beaser. It is a work of pure Americana, stunningly rendered with authenticity by the duo. A magnificent work!