Modern and Contemporary

Keyan Emami – The Black Fish
Andrew Downing; Majd Sekkar; Ton Beau String Quartet; Louis Pino; Naoko Tsujita
Centrediscs CMCCD30422 (blackfishproject.com)

Toronto-based Iranian-Canadian composer Keyan Emami has composed a multi stylistic and instrumental masterpiece in his three-movement inspirational work based on the well-known Persian children’s book, The Little Black Fish, which tells the story of a little black fish who leaves his pond to explore the world. Commissioned by Ton Beau String Quartet, it is scored for string quartet, clarinet (Majd Sekkar), double bass (Andrew Downing), percussion (Louis Pino, Naoko Tsujita), with electronics and narration provided by Emami. The composed parts and improvised sections are performed brilliantly. 

The opening movement Dailiness immediately catches the listener’s attention with held notes and spooky string repeated two-note intervals. The more upbeat middle section features clarinet lead melody, bass and percussion transforming to more Middle Eastern idioms and a slower closing. The dramatic, moody 18-bar theme passacaglia Dreaming combines classic strings feel, jazz bass and all styles clarinet music with spoken words inspired by Attar of Nishapur’s bird poem. The final movement Swimming In D is inspired by Terry Riley’s minimalistic In C. Emami’s short stylistic diverse 48 melodic patterns add dramatic quasi minimalist ideas and movement in alternating dynamic, instrumental and stylistic sections from frolicking to calming to loud crashing effects. Sekkar’s colourful tones and wailing clarinet, and Emani’s allowing the performers freedom to repeat patterns as they wish, are highlights.

Emami’s masterful ability to combine children’s story ideas with his well-developed symphonic, jazz/rock, Persian, world, improvisational and contemporary inspired composing makes this music for all ages.

Bekah Simms – Bestiaries
Various Artists
Centrediscs CMCCD 30022 (centrediscs.ca)

Canadian composer Bekah Simms is no stranger to the concert stage having been the recipient of over 30 composition awards, but her latest work Bestiaries takes us into a new realm of height and depth. This album comprises three chamber works, and highlights Simms’ fine orchestral colouring, as well as exacting leadership from Brian Current’s Cryptid Ensemble and Véronique Lacroix’s Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, the former being created for the express purpose of this album. At times feeling chaotic, the work never loses a finely crafted sensibility of every note being exactly where the composer wants it to be.

The opening of Foreverdark has us awakening in what could be described as a subway tunnel and very quickly drags us through underwater culverts and dark machinery. Led by amplified cello, this is stunning work from Toronto’s Amahl Arulanandam, with whom Simms enjoys a close relationship. This is an incredibly exciting piece I would love to see performed live.  

From Void is a chilling and aggressive piece, after which we welcome Bestiary l+ll, a cinematic journey broadcasting a depth and width of oceanic proportions. We are floating over landscapes of rock, darkly shrouded shipwrecks and elegant sea creatures. Simms pulls us in, taking us along on her deep dives into her personal Neverworld like a school of fish following in her journey to the oceanic underworld, led by the brilliant waves of vocal elasticity from Charlotte Mundy’s beckoning Siren call and pulling us up for air with bird calls and what Simms describes as her “sonic ecosystem.”

Simms crafts a tapestry of strict essentials that are tensile without being harsh, like finely knit silk crochets transforming to steel mesh. Is there such a description as densely translucent? This would be it.

Yang Chen – longing for _
Various Artists
Independent (peopleplacesrecords.bandcamp.com)

Longing for _ is, at its core, a beautiful story about possibilities of friendships, creative collaborations and music in between, in a world affected by pandemic restrictions. This album by Toronto-based percussionist Yang Chen threads a delicate line between pushing boundaries and maintaining a state of serenity throughout. Each of the eight compositions is done in collaboration with a different artist and is a testament to a creativity generated through friendship. As a result, the album is a curious mixture of musical styles and individual personalities – here we have elements of electronic, experimental, modern composition, pop, R&B and free improvisation. Worth noting is that all compositions are accompanied by a video, a visual representation of textures and narratives we hear.

Chen is innovative and experimental in their approach and gently unapologetic about their ideas. They masterfully employ an array of percussion instruments on this album, the most innovative being using a bicycle to create sounds, textures and movement (Stephanie Orlando’s crank/set ). The energy ranges from grungy and provocative (Andrew Noseworthy’s All Good Pieces Have Two Things) to a contemplative solo vibraphone triptych (Charles Lutvak’s rest/stop). With violinists/composers Yaz Lancaster and Connie Li, Chen explores dreamy and psychedelic worlds, respectively, in EUPHORIC and Nighttime renewals toward more friendship, more love, like snowfall, I want to sing with you. Sara Constant’s silt and Jason Doell’s through intimate, swims, are big textural adventures. The surprising switch comes in the form of Sarian Sankoh’s till the dam breaks, an R&B track with warm vocals and gentle steel pan. 

This is an adventurous, probing, charming debut album.

John Luther Adams – Sila: the breath of the world
JACK Quartet; The Crossing
Cantaloupe Music (cantaloupemusic.com/albums/sila-breath-of-world)

When Schoenberg abandoned the chromatic Wagnerian tonality of Verklärte Nacht one critic described his work as sounding as though “someone had smeared the score of Tristan whilst the ink was still wet.” Debussy took an evolutionary approach to this 12-tone system, gradually dissolving traditional scales and harmony in a beguiling, evocative sound world.   

The Inuit of Canada’s Arctic have known about this seamless harmonic experience long before Schoenberg and Debussy; and honestly, long before John Luther Adams. But Adams appears to have found a way to re-invent the concept like no one else, except, perhaps the Inuit. 

Sila: The Breath of the World is Adams’ monumental re-creation of that breath of the world in the concert hall. It is recreated in a continuous score “written” as it were, when the breath that comes from the very air around us is profoundly transformed by dozens of percussionists, woodwinds, brass, strings and the inimitable voices of The Crossing complemented by the JACK Quartet

Adams’ Sila begins with the rolling thunder of percussion imitating the rumbling of the earth awakening, its breath a singular inhalation of the teeming humanity who inhabit it. 

Voices and instruments join the majestic harmonics of the low B flat and wend their way into what seems like a single note encompassing all 12-tones seamlessly; music morphing into a prolonged inhalation and exhalation of Sila: The Breath of the World, before falling into silence. Art imitating the single note of life’s breath.