Modern and Contemporary

Difficult Grace
Seth Parker Woods
Cedille CDR 90000 219 (cedillerecords.org)

The work contained in cellist Seth Parker Woods’ Difficult Grace almost defies classification. This is an album of live theatre, performance art, electronics, spoken word and poetry, political awareness, storytelling, ambient music and gorgeous cello playing. The overall cohesiveness contained is a theme of commitment to art, and if you were lucky enough to catch Woods’ March 2022 Toronto performance of this album you will be familiar with what a great work of art it is. 

The scope of the works contained is wide and deep. Beginning with Frederic Gifford’s 2019 Difficult Grace, one is immediately captured for the entirety of the album. Based on the poetry of Dudley Randall’s Primitives the verbal and musically sonic transformation is easily accessed. The delivery by Woods is a performance on its own. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s third movement Lamentations from his Black/Folk Song Suite reflecting the African-American experience is solo pizzicato throughout and aptly described in the title Calvary Ostinato. 

Monty Adkins’ 1972 Winter Tendrils is a luscious melodic track, followed by Nathalie Joachim’s 1983 The Race 1915, one the album’s most powerful works. Inspired by visual artist Jacob Lawrence’s images of the historic African-American migration beginning in 1915, it features excerpts from issues of the important Black newspaper The Chicago Defender, published in that pivotal year citing the oppression and atrocities facing millions compelled to travel uncertain journeys. The spoken text and solo cello rise above the undercurrent of the train-like electronic ostinato, driving the piece to its powerful conclusion.  

Alvin Singleton’s 1970 work Arogoru (from the Twi language meaning “to play”) is a motivic, gestural piece followed by another of Joachim’s, Dam Mwen Yo. The final piece is Ted Hearn’s Freefucked (2022). A complex and yet straightforward suite of songs showcasing poems by Kemi Alabi, from their poetry collection Against Heaven, which really completes this fantastic journey with the use of electronics, vocal processing and solo cello. The suite is dynamic and full and could be listened to in parts or in whole. Each movement is stunning. It helps to follow the poetry included in the accompanying booklet but the music stands without it. This whole piece is awesome.

Recesses
Lee Weisert
New Focus Recordings FCR366 (newfocusrecordings.com)

The album Recesses is a fantastical sonic journey of melting ice, acoustic piano, degraded tape and voices, a kind of hustle and bustle mixed with water droplets and electronic fuzz. Layers of time, stratus clouds shifting, streaks of water moving through air, frost on metal, children speaking. Colours of purple, grey and green. Sparkle and dust. Layer under layer under layer. Windows open and close, breezes blow through, curtains move. Empty walls fill up with images and empty out again. Conversations rise and fall. This album is a masterful creation, a demonstration of visually listening peripherally with a third eye, of noticing and letting go.

Never feeling preachy or heavy, these four beautiful tracks morph between mindful and wild, a flowing sonic movement that feels unrushed but is never still. This is a magical space to enter without the wastefulness of extraneous noise or volume. The fourth track, Similar Speeds, is a rather mesmerizing visualization of subtle stretching of mis-timing, reminiscent of the metal ball toy Newton’s Cradle.

Professor of composition at Northwestern University, DMA pianist and multi-instrumentalist Lee Weisert has collected a brilliant team of collaborators to build his journey with. Allen Anderson on modular synth,  Nicholas DiEugenio, violin, Jonathon Kirk, electronics and Melissa Martin, vocals. This is an album to listen to while doing nothing else.

Listen to 'Recesses' Now in the Listening Room

Lumières Nordiques
Vincent Boilard; Quatuor Molinari
ATMA ACD2 2859 (atmaclassique.com/en)

Lumières Nordiques is the first solo album released by Vincent Boilard, associate principal oboe of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. Featuring contemporary pieces for oboe and strings, Boilard is joined by the award-winning Molinari Quartet in his passion project to help elevate previously unrecorded Canadian works. These compositions are varied soundscapes using the full range of tonal colours and technical flourishes this group of instruments has to offer. 

Beginning with solo oboe, which is then joined by string quartet, Stewart Grant’s Serenata da Camera morphs into a set of variations that showcase each instrument, inspired by Musaeus, the original group (with Grant himself on oboe) – composed for their Belarusian tour in 1991. Boilard’s beautiful, soft tone is masterfully blended with the brilliance of the strings.

Originally a ballet, Elizabeth Raum’s Searching for Sophia was adapted to this three-movement piece for oboe and string quartet. The movements draw on sounds and harmonies from the composer’s childhood when her Syrian grandmother would sing to make her dance; a poem written by the composer about what she wishes to express in music; and traditional melodies that her mother sang to her as a child. Laced predominantly with a Middle Eastern colour, this piece uses all of the instruments equally, allowing the full range of the strings and the oboe to bring out the different characters of each movement.

Michael Parker’s Requiem Parentibus, Op.34 was written as a tribute to his father after his sudden death, exploring the emotions of incomprehension, sadness, anger and melancholy. These complex emotions are represented on the oboe with high shrieks followed by soulful lyrical playing while the strings are used mainly as an atmospheric colour.

Lastly, Brian Cherney’s In the Stillness of the Summer Wind was commissioned by his brother, oboist Lawrence Cherney, and the Hungarian String Quartet. Sounding as if inspired by summers spent in the countryside, this piece draws the listener in with various depictions of nature through the different tonal colours used by the strings as well as the four glass chimes used at the end to create the sound of a gentle, rustling breeze. 

Boilard’s virtuosity and supple tone is beautifully paired with the inspired playing of the Molinari Quartet throughout this album. Hopefully Boilard will continue this project of recording new works so that they are brought to life and appreciated.

Sounds of Time & Distance
Alfredo Santa Ana
Independent (alfredosantaana.ca) 

Born in Mexico City and working in Vancouver since 2003, composer/guitarist Alfredo Santa Ana draws on his experiences composing for television, film, dance, instrumentalists and orchestras in his self-described “hybrid” nine-track album for guitar, electronics and flute combinations.

Santa Ana does everything here with successful finesse, from performing, composing, recording, mixing, mastering and producing. Opening track Under an Orange Sky (2017), originally commissioned for 18 musicians, is a guitar duet here, performed with Michael Ibsen. Santa Ana’s musical depiction of the horrific BC fires and subsequent long periods of orange skies opens with exciting fast lines and accented single notes, followed by suspenseful longer lower-pitch held tones and occasional dissonances, and repeated midsection minimalistic lines with slower quieter sounds adding a reflective touch. More virtuosic well-thought-out guitar performances by Made in Canada Duo as Ibsen & Nathan Bredeson play Santa Ana’s interesting Foundation Visit High Scatter (2022) uninterrupted changing sound environments from slow strums to pitch slides to punchy rhythmic sections. Wave Remote (2022), performed by McGregor-Verdejo Duo, has flutist Mark Takeshi McGregor and guitarist Adrian Verdejo use loopers and electric guitar pedal technology to at times play above themselves in almost quasi rock and contemporary music improvisations. Steve Reich’s three track Electric Counterpoint (1987) receives a meticulous respectful performance by Santa Ana.

The musical world of guitar explodes with unexpected new sounds, flavours and effects in this fantastic release.

Listen to 'Sounds of Time & Distance' Now in the Listening Room