Modern and Contemporary

Newfoundout
Nick Storring
Mappa Editions MZP027 (nickstorring.bandcamp.com)

Toronto Composer Nick Storring is a prolific artist. As a composer, writer, musician and arts curator he seems to be everywhere, and yet he managed to touch down long enough to complete his seventh solo album. Consistently surprising us with his dexterous layering and technology skills, Newfoundout is a perfect blend of Storring’s musical ear for raw audio beauty and his skillful sound assembly. A completely acoustic layering of curiosities – is that a vuvuzela in harmony? – the compositions are so deftly complete you will forget to keep asking what you are hearing. From the first track Dome, a full 12’41” piece that could have been presented in a concert hall, it’s nearly impossible to find the distinction between what might have been improvised and what might be composed. Each track is intentionally directed, spare and transparent, blissfully curious at times and at others suspended in outer space, swirling in dust and light. Storring ensures that there is nothing superfluous to cloud the beauty of the found sounds; drums dance, dog whistles sing, and the final mix is perfect. One is reminded of the phrase “truth is stranger than fiction.”

The album flows superbly as a whole. Never aimless, each piece weaves intentionally between composed sections and exquisitely layered psychedelia, anchored with an assortment of undefined instruments, plucked strings, pianos and drum rhythms. It’s like witnessing the mysteries of life on Earth. With tracks named after Ontario ghost towns, Newfoundout is a sublimely delicious curiosity. I lost track of the beginnings and ends of each piece and just enjoyed the entire album start to finish.

Felipe Téllez – Songs of Longing
TakeFive Ensemble
Centrediscs CMCCD 28721 (cmccanada.org/shop/cd-cmccd-28721)

The TakeFive Ensemble (comprised of violinists Lynn Kuo and Csaba Koczo, violist Carolyn Blackwell, cellist Emmanuelle Beaulieu Bergeron and pianist Shoshana Telner) have recorded two substantial works by Colombian-Canadian composer Felipe Téllez. The first – in three movements – titled Fate, is rather traditional in its language and form. This music cycles through a tempestuous first movement into a tender and lyrical second movement and finishes with a dramatic and sorrowful third and final movement. The composer describes fate as taking on many contrasting characteristics that may or may not be within our control. With the cheery punctuation heard in the final measures of this work, it is clear that fate has delivered a happy ending in this case.

The second work is a collection of songs without words in five movements that adopts a less classical treatment than the first piece on the disc. Titled Colombian Songs, it utilizes colourful gestures and clever twists of mood to provide a pleasing reaction to some traditional Colombian song sources. The musicians in TakeFive execute Téllez’s music with a shimmering brilliance. The expressive quality permeating from each instrument in the ensemble is at once individually impressive but also blends into an exquisite whole. Bravo to TakeFive on some superb performances – an ensemble I hope to hear much more from in the future.

Philip Glass – The Complete Piano Etudes
Leslie Dala
Redshift Records (redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/philip-glass-the-complete-piano-etudes)

Continuing the tradition established by Chopin, Debussy and Ligeti, piano etudes by Philip Glass have been loved by many concert pianists. Although most etudes are created for the purpose of pursuing a specific harmonic or technical preoccupation related to the instrument, Glass’ carry a particular element of beauty and depth. Melancholy is mixed with sweetness, rhythmical drive with unique harmonic language; one senses an arc of the composer’s personal relationship with the piano in this music.

The new recording by Leslie Dala, a conductor and pianist based in Vancouver, brings in a solitary air of an artist who has found stillness. Dala has a natural pianistic affinity for Glass’ compositional language. He experiments with a wealth of colours found in these etudes but never strays away from the classical pianistic tradition. A strong percussive touch accentuates the fluid motion of the music. The result is an album that is refined and rich, natural in its expression.

Hearing the 20 etudes in succession makes for the best listening experience. Each etude has its own character and atmosphere but it is the flow, the longer narrative and the observation of correlational aspects and the morphing of Glass’ compositional and Dala’s interpretative ideas that gives the listener deeper understanding of this music. By the time the last etude is played, gentle and unassuming, the sonic space becomes clear. And when the sound blends with silence at the very end, one is granted the sense of closure.

Maya Beiser x Philip Glass
Maya Beiser
Islandia Music Records (islandiamusic.com)

Talking Heads front person David Bryne, in his 1999 essay “I Hate World Music” that predates his excellent book, How Music Works, describes so-called “world music” as “a name for a bin in the record store signifying stuff that doesn’t belong anywhere else in the store.” In 2021, as bins, record stores and, to a lesser extent, musical genres and meaningless categorizations in terms of the way that sound is captured and assembled (and marketed) fades into the rear view, there remain vestiges of (to artificially demarcate things historically) the pre-streaming playlist-driven genre tribalism of the “Before Times.” 

I say all of this to push back on the characterization that I have read of Maya Beiser – the exceptionally talented American cellist who has released an evocative and wonderful retrospective of Philip Glass’ music on her own Islandia Music Records label – as “avant-garde.” This recent recording offers, simply put, beautiful music (it’s Glass after all!), played exceptionally well by an expressive and emotive artist who has much that is new and insightful to say on these largely familiar Glass pieces.  

Captured in beautiful fidelity at the Hudson Opera House and, through the studio wizardry of multi-tracking, looping cello parts and the creation of what she calls a “sonic cello kaleidoscope,” Beiser puts forth meaningful arrangements on this fine recording that defy every categorization other than good! It is little wonder why Beiser has such insight into Glass’ music: she was the cellist chosen (by Glass) to be part of the Philip Glass Ensemble on the worldwide tour of his Qatsi trilogy in 2005 and she brings this familiarity, creativity and attention to detail to the fore on Maya Beiser x Philip Glass.