Metamorphose
Shawn Mativetsky; Amir Amiri; Sarah Pagé
Independent FHM104 (mativetskyamiripage.bandcamp.com/album/metamorphose)
This sublime, multi-disciplinary and ambient world music triumvirate was formed in 2019, and is comprised of three skilled, Montreal-based musician/composers: harpist and producer of this project, Sarah Pagé; classically trained Irani performer/composer and santur (Persian dulcimer) master, Amir Amiri; and Canadian “Ambassador” of the Benares style of tabla playing, Shawn Mativetsky. With the release of Metamorphose, this unique and “unbound” trio has synthesized elements of seminal Persian music and ancient Hindustani rhythmic modalities, which have been manifested through a veil of unconventional, but technically pristine, classicism.
There are five stirring tracks here, opening with Yavaran (Companions). This is the only composition here with lilting vocals, drawn from a Sufi devotional song, and it includes a dynamic dance motif in section two (Lexgi from Azerbaijan), before returning to the primary melodic theme. Pagé’s luminous harp transports us on this track, brilliantly supported by Amiri and Matavetsky. The title track also crosses the Bosphorus with themes of transformation expressed through a venerable Kurdish melody, gorgeously propelled by Amiri.
The three movements of Quarter Tone Suite reflect the very bedrock of Persian music, and the musical lens widens with Maktrismos, which embraces both an ambient electronic landscape and Greek melodic motifs, dis-interred from deep antiquity and catapulted into our present sensibilities with skill and taste. All of the inspired music presented by these three masters seems to posit that in the arts, “time” is not linear, but plastic and subjective, and that any artistic point in time may be accessed and celebrated – just as it has been so magnificently on this recording.
