By Nick Ostrum
This review will feature a series of Canadian composers and musicians
writing for and performing solo.
Cheryl Duvall – Patrick Giguère: Intimes Exubé
rances
(Redshift Records, 2024) *****
Cheryl Duvall first came to my attention from her 2020 release,
Harbour,on which she played compositions by Anna Höstman. She played
beautifully on this release, capturing the “patient and deliberate, eerily
emotive…winsome, but dissonant” dimensions of those compositions. On
Intimes Exube
rances she deploys a similar sensitivity to the
spaciousness and brittleness of new music to a series of compositions that
are memorably haunting.
For tracks on this album wind, slowly, like a damaged and abandoned
ballerina on a music box still spinning and playing an untouchable melody.
They evoke that, image, at least. The melodies do not simply repeat
endlessly, but develop, shifting to more forte and (tragically) defiant
sections and balancing interesting tonal dynamics with decay and layering
fore- and background. At times, it sounds like Duvall is playing over a
muffled recording, though I am pretty sure this is all one piano in real
time. Then, she stretches out into some impressive complex, but measure
lattices that wend into tight irregular knots, but also glisten.
Intimes Exubérances is a consistent and
consistently gripping example of contemporary neoromanticism that, at times,
slides toward new music but maintains that same emotivity and gusto that
characterize the most evocative melody-based music. And, listening to this,
I cannot quite escape the feeling that I am listening to Suicide in an
Airplane anew, though here expanded, revisited, and reinterpreted over four
compositions. It is that potent, that enchanting, and that discordant.
Christopher Whitley – almost as soft as silence (self-released,
2024)
Almost as soft as silence captures violinist Christopher Whitley,
equipped with a Stradivarius, on a series of fifteen spontaneous
compositions. All are short, ranging from just over 4 minutes to 18
seconds, with most falling under two minutes. According to the liner
notes, these are a product of the session that produced his debut
Describe Yourself, wherein he plays the music of other composers. I cannot speak with
certainty about the circumstances of performance, but it makes sense that
he would balance his disciplined realizations of the work of others with
more free-floating, experimental exercises.
Maybe it is best to approach almost as soft as silence as a series
of sketches, not originally intended for public ears. They are intimate,
sometimes scraps of melodies, other times more fully realized pieces that
lean on layers of tones, tinny plucks, and gushes of glittery sound that
embrace the violin for what it is outside of the symphony, especially in the
jazz tradition: a portable instrument, every bit as refined as any other,
but also especially fitting for exploring variations on themes and filling
a space with beautiful sound. This is not to deemphasize Whitley’s skill or
creativity, which are apparent throughout. Rather, it is to say he is onto
something. Almost as soft as silence is very much a product of a
time when cording technologies and the ease of online distribution make
such wispy releases possible. Through the violin itself as well as
Whitley’s wide range of contemporary classical techniques point to the
concert hall, moreover, the fleetingness of the pieces, their conception as
brief one-off, in-and-of-the-moment expressions, the music serves as a
welcome bridge between vying traditions of the elevated and profane, of
composition and improvisation.
Emilie Cecilia LeBel – landscapes of memory (Redshift Records,
2024)
Landscapes of memory consists of two realizations of Lebel
compositions for solo piano. The first is titled ghost geography and has
been entrusted to the skillful and patient hands of Wesley Shen. The music
is slow, plodding at times. A constant hum whispers in the background. Shen
lays out imperfectly repeating clusters that shift dynamics but remain
somewhere between plaintive and defiant. Indeed, this seems a meditation,
maybe on a past mostly hollowed and forgotten but whose ruins provoke
recognition, or on death. There is something elegaic about this in its
somberness and the sense of loss – possibly balanced with partial
reclamation – it projects.
Pale forms in uncommon light, performed by pianist Luciane Cardassi,
follows. As with ghost geography, pale forms might not be a true solo – a
single high-pitched drone accompanies the pianist – but it is quite close.
And Cardassi is magnificent in both her discipline and vulnerability. The
music is minimal but emotive. It searches for melody and sometimes comes
across one, only to abandon that line and restart that process of
excavation from scratch. Sometimes it falls into hopeful territory,
sometimes darker and more unsettling crevices. No stretch, however, lasts
more than a few minutes. Each movement is broken by quiet, whether that
single tone or, after 12 minutes, resonance fading to silence to return
again minutes later, as the piece reaches some of its more dramatic and
active phrasings.
With each track lasting over 30 minutes, landscapes of memory can
be a challenging listen. However, the effort pays off. Highly recommended,
especially for those enamored of the Another Timbre label the more active
corners of wandelweiser.
Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa –
Known Unknowns-Solo Piano Works by Rodney Sharman
(Redshift Records, 2024)
More so than the other albums reviewed here, Known
Unknowns embraces an umbra of tense scales punctuated by rich,
discordant chords. At times, the melodies entangle and verge toward
shattering, but they never quite reach that point.
Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa is a muscular pianist. She can be tender, but those
instances reveal just how powerfully knotted her performance is otherwise.
(I have to assume this lies in the pianist as much as the composer.)
Rather than nimble flights, she lingers, and insistently bangs out
spiraling ascents and descents (throughout much of the album) or heavy
sheets of chords (Narcissus). This is to her credit and makes those moments
approaching the sublime (especially in Tristan and Isolde and Known and
Unknown, in its repetition and near-phasing) more notable. There is also
something organic about these pieces. They can be beautiful and majestic,
dark and cryptic, and gnarled and raw all at the same time. Indeed, it is
that tension between the pristine and the raw that gives these works their
character.
Known Unknowns is the first disc solely devoted to compositions by
Vancouver composer Rodney Sharman. It seems such a release is long overdue.
The downside to such an approach, of course, is that many of these
compositions come off as etudes or sketches, realized wonderfully but
somewhat disjointed from each other. (The vocal narrative of The Garden has
a similarly disruptive effect, though that juxtaposition slowly starts to
make sense over its deceptively hushed 10-minute cabaret.) The abrupt
endings and changes can be jarring. Then again, when they work within the
compositions, they do so wonderfully.