03 Colin EatockColin Eatock – Choral and Orchestral Music
Sinfonia Toronto; Soundstreams’ Choir 21
Centrediscs CMCCD31023 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

Following up on the Canadian Music Centre’s release of Colin Eatock: Chamber Music in 2012 (CMCCD 17812) this second volume features Eatock’s orchestral and choral works in performances by Sinfonia Toronto conducted by Nurhan Arman and the Soundstreams’ Choir 21 under the direction of David Fallis.

A baker’s dozen of Eatock’s choral works are on offer here. A number of them are based on sacred texts: The Lord Is Risen!, Three Psalms and Benedictus es: Alleluia are straightforward, major key settings in a largely syllabic and homophonic style, conventionally adorned with fleeting imitative passages, serene modulations and an abundance of sighing suspensions. Cast in a similar vein, the secular selections exhibit a somewhat darker tone and feature settings of texts by well-known authors Walt Whitman, Amy Lowell, Christina Rossetti and the exceedingly obscure 16th-century poet Francis Kindlemarsh. 

The extended opening track, a setting of Whitman’s Ashes of Soldiers, is an expansion of a work that also appeared in Eatock’s previous chamber music disc, heard here in a setting for string orchestra and harp with an extended instrumental introduction featuring a beautifully played introspective clarinet solo by Kornel Wolak followed by soprano Lynn Anoush Isnar’s sensitive interpretation of the text. Only the final selection of the disc is purely instrumental, a delightfully quirky Sinfonietta for chamber orchestra in three concise movements that are by turns bumptious, plangent and just plain silly, all tied together by a chromatic four-note garland seemingly based on transpositions of the B-A-C-H motive of yore (and perhaps the analogous D-S-C-H motive as well in light of the galloping Shostakovich-style rhythms of the finale!). 

All performances were expertly recorded at Toronto’s sonically legendary Humbercrest United Church by Robert DiVito. The clarity of diction is superb throughout.

04 Paul FrehnerPaul Frehner – Sometimes the Devil Plays Fate
Mary Beth Nelson; Dominic Desautels; Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra; Gemma New
Centrediscs CMCCD 31423 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

This release features a fine ensemble of musicians from the Hamilton Philharmonic under the superb leadership of Gemma New, with mezzo-soprano May Beth Nelson singing the title track. The chamber ensemble comprises string and woodwind quintets, plus trumpet, trombone, percussion, keyboards and harp. The undertaking was accomplished in the impossibly short timeframe of two days last September, a fact all the more astonishing given that New was rehearsing Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra during the same week.

Poems by Dane Swan provide text for Sometimes the Devil Plays Fate (which is a line from one of the two: Epitaph 8; Eclipse), along with an excerpt of a poem by Charles Mingus (also called Eclipse). Frehner shows a subtle appreciation for the themes expressed, repeating sections and giving them different musical treatments. The ensemble provides a commentary behind the incantation, sometimes syllabic, sometimes lyric. Nelson’s mezzo colour is perfectly suited to the dark material. Sometimes the balance is off, to the detriment of depth of sonic field. Recording this complex music under these time constraints might be to blame. Regardless, Frehner is a skilled orchestrator and knows exactly how to set players and voice in complementing strengths.  

Voluptuous Panic is the intriguing title of the work filling the final two tracks: Escape Velocity and Saltarello – Proxima Centauri; Frehner captures vertiginous sensation, often employing a “circus band” aesthetic. The middle cut is a piece I know and love: Cloak; Concerto for Clarinet and Ensemble (2016, revised 2022). Soloist Dominic Desautels gives a hyper-dramatic reading of the piece. The revisions work well, making me want another shot at it myself.*  

Editor’s note: Max Christie was the soloist in the premiere of Cloak with the New Music Concerts ensemble under Robert Aitken at Betty Oliphant Theatre in December, 2017.

05 Robert LemayRobert Lemay – Lignum et Spiritus
Stephen Tam; Anthony Thompson; Ron Cohen Mann; Kevin Harris; Yoko Hirota
Centrediscs CMCCT 12323 (cmccanada.org/shop/cmcct-12323/)

Composer Robert Lemay has, in a recording he calls Lignum et Spiritus, attempted to fuse four kinds of woodwinds instruments with the piano and enlisted pianist Yoko Hirota to facilitate this fusion with four instrumentalists. The performing artists include Stephen Tam (flute), Anthony Thompson (clarinet), Ron Cohen Mann (oboe) and Kevin Harris (bassoon) respectively for works titled Point d’équilibre, Shared Visions, Play Off and Au courde-à-courde.

Lemay’s intention to “fuse” two musical instruments suggests an attempt – albeit both scientific and intellectual – not so much to inextricably bind, but to allow the two fused entities to create something new. The attempt, he says is non-pedagogical. He means for the music to organically redirect the physical nature of each of the individual instruments – wood or Lignum – by exerting a spectral force, which suggests breathing a new spirit into the sonic nature of the instruments, hence the Spiritus in the title.

Each pair of instruments produces alternating timbres that magically create new organic-sounding variations. Lemay’s imaginative creations and Hirota’s inspirational pianism preside over duets which are mystical Schoenbergian odysseys that create new musical space transformed by vertical (pitch) and horizontal (rhythm and permutation) forces.

06 TransformationTransformation – Interactive works for piano
Megumi Masaki
Centrediscs CMCDVD 29322 (cmccanada.org/product-category/recordings/centrediscs)

Japanese-Canadian Megumi Masaki is an internationally renowned pianist, multimedia performing artist, educator and curator who was recently appointed Director of Music at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The DVD Transformation features her performing three interactive Canadian compositions for piano and new technology, each composed in collaboration with Masaki. A project documentary follows.

Orpheus (1) by T. Patrick Carrabré (composer, live electronics) and Margaret Atwood (poetry), for piano, toy piano, synthesizer and voice, challenges the Orpheus myth as a love story. Electronic sound washes open, then Masaki’s musically played simple lines and white snowflake-like specks on the blue backdrop. Faster accessible music, keyboard lines, spoken poetry, electronic rumbles/washes and backdrop scenes add excitement.

Piano Games by Keith Hamel (composer, software designer, live computer operator) for piano, hand tracking and live interactive video which responds to the piano sounds and hand positions, making each performance different. Backdrop lightning-like flashes and swirls match Masaki’s outfit colours. Hostile loud sounds and exploding lights to calming softer sounds and slower swirls to the pianist’s physical gestures, this is gaming chamber music!

Dōshite? どうして? by Bob Pritchard (composer, SHRUG designer, live computer operator) for piano, voice and movement honours the over 21,000 Japanese Canadians sent to internment camps in 1942 during WWII. Use of spoken text from Tsukiye Muriel Kitagawa’s book This is My Own (editor Roy Miki’s permission), a film featuring black and white photos from this time and piano music including Japanese song fragments “is offered as a form of apology”. 

Masaki and each composer talk about their musical and technological creative process and working together in the informative Transformation Documentary Film.

The music, visuals and hi-tech interactions on Transformation are indeed unforgettably transforming.

07 Ther Holy Gasp...and the Lord Hath Taken Away
The Holy Gasp
Independent  (theholygasp.bandcamp.com)

If, like me, you had neither heard of, nor listened to, The Holy Gasp before, the mere thought of approaching this album would be to expect something spiritually inclined. After all an ensemble called The Holy Gasp… well, what other kind of music would the ensemble make? Moreover, the album is titled … and the Lord Hath Taken Away, a direct quote from The Book of Job, of the Bible’s Old Testament spoken by the afflicted man himself at the height of his long suffering.

However, as it turns out, the ensemble’s frontman, Toronto-born poet, composer and vocalist of repute, Benjamin Hackman – knowledgeable as he as about scripture – is also a wonderfully free-thinking musician who can wield his impressive tenor voice and move easily between a kind of opera recitative, he’s-a-jolly-good-fellow klezmer, moaning blues-inflected vocals and any other style that his extraordinary music demands.  

Hackman’s multi-faceted skills and this shape-shifting music are eloquently articulated by the musicians in this large ensemble. And it is all held together as if in an enormous musical sculpture by the extraordinary Robert W. Stevenson who conducts it all. To experience a snapshot version simply skip from the darkening of The Merry Man of Uz to Who Framed Moishe Hackman? to the rollicking Everything Where It Should Be. But do that and you will be missing out on 15 other songs, each with its own evocative mystery and musical thrill. 

Listen to '...and the Lord Hath Taken Away' Now in the Listening Room

08 Nina PlatisaZa Klavir: For the Piano
Nina Platiša
Independent (ninaplatisa.com)

Elemental and concise – most under three minutes – the 27 pieces of Za Klavir: (For the Piano), composed between 2018 and 2022, are subtly spiced with piquant sprinkles of Balkan folk idioms. Engagingly varied in tempo, rhythm and mood, they share unadorned melodic lines and sparse accompaniments, often only simple pedal points.

Belgrade-born composer/pianist Nina Platiša, now based in Guelph, came to Canada as a three-year-old in 1994. Responding to my email query, she wrote, “When I was young, my mom taught my sister and me Balkan folk songs… As I began to compose the solo piano pieces that would eventually make up this album, the music to which I felt the closest connection was often the simplest, pieces with simple melodies and harmonies akin to those of Balkan folk music – unpretentious and transparent. They seemed to issue from me naturally.”

Save for the concluding Saputnik (Companion) No.1, the pieces are numbered, not named. In an interview posted online, Platiša described three of them, beginning with the solemn No.7. “I saw an image of it being played at the funeral of my grandfather or great uncle. I pictured my family and friends dancing to No.20 at my family’s slava (saint’s day) and I saw myself playing No.25 for a newborn baby.”

I was particularly enchanted by the delicate, melancholy beauties of Nos.5, 11, 14 and 19, reminiscent of Satie’s haunting Gymnopédies. I found Za Klavir compelling listening throughout; you may, too.

Listen to 'Za Klavir: For the Piano' Now in the Listening Room

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