“I’M JUST GOING TO TOUCH IT ON THE TOP,” SAYS CARMEN BRADEN, LOOKING AT A BLACKENED PORCUPINE-LIKE LUMP OF ICE. “WHAT I THINK WILL HAPPEN: IT’S JUST GOING TO FALL APART. READY?” It’s May 2014, and she’s talking to a camera. Her now-husband, Eli Purchase, is filming her on the banks of the Mackenzie RiverContinue reading “Carmen Braden Raises the Volume on the Subarctic”
Genre Archives
Lerner, Filiano, Grassi. Live at Edgefest.
Although a tale of two cities—three if you count the Ann Arbor, Michigan, recording location—this CD confirms that Toronto pianist Marilyn Lerner has cemented a mutually beneficial musical relationship with bassist Ken Filiano and percussionist Lou Grassi, both based in New York. Like a contemporary auto that doesn’t stint on speed and comfort just becauseContinue reading “Lerner, Filiano, Grassi. Live at Edgefest.”
Quartetski. Quartetski Does Bartók: Béla Bartók / Mikrokosmos.
Quartetski has devoted itself to transforming well-known classical pieces through radical shifts in instrumentation, improvisation, and recomposition. The Montreal quintet has recorded works by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Mussorgsky, and here they take on Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos, the inventive and extensive set of piano exercises that introduced students to unusual modes, metres, and interval patterns. ElectricContinue reading “Quartetski. Quartetski Does Bartók: Béla Bartók / Mikrokosmos.”
Open Waters Festival.
Since 1990 the Upstream Music Association has been a crucial part of Halifax’s vibrant music community—both as presenter and as ensemble. For nineteen years, veteran improviser Paul Cram, a longtime Upstream affiliate, was artistic director. Lukas Pearse, an industrious and multifaceted musician, was named as Cram’s successor last June. This year’s Open Waters Festival sawContinue reading “Open Waters Festival.”
Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville, 32nd Edition.
The Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville (FIMAV) arrives with the late, brief spring of Quebec’s central region, an energizing jolt between winter and summer that sees the flowering of older vines and new life bursting through the earth. This year’s instalment of FIMAV did what it has done very well for many years: present challengingContinue reading “Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville, 32nd Edition.”
New Stages For New Music
Intense purple LED light washes over the Thin Edge New Music Collective (ABOVE PHOTO) as they scramble to soundcheck, seeming to heighten the chaotic mood at Long Winter, Toronto’s monthly interarts festival series during the coldest season. Two different sources of electric guitar bleed into the room from other performance spaces inside the historic, ramblingContinue reading “New Stages For New Music”
The Idiosyncratic Musicality of Marc Sabat
The emergence of Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique in the early 1920s not only presented an altogether new conception of pitch in music, it also prompted a dramatic and widespread shift in the fundamental thinking surrounding Western concert music. Its latent quasiscientific implications precipitated a number of new systems of composition. As composers foraged for newContinue reading “The Idiosyncratic Musicality of Marc Sabat”
Jean-François Blouin. Lieues de résonances.
Montreal-based composer Jean-François Blouin delivers fifty-five minutes of rich sound mass at the crossroads of instrumental and musique concrète. In Lieues de résonances, his 2016 release, we are immersed in a bass heavy assemblage of stringed instruments, stereo delays, and ghostly soundscapes. Relying primarily on cello, guitar, and stick bass, Blouin’s music also builds uponContinue reading “Jean-François Blouin. Lieues de résonances.”
Ana Sokolovic and Ensemble Transmission. Folklore Imaginaire.
This Canadian Music Centre release in Naxos’ Canadian Classics series offers sixty minutes of Ana Sokolovic’s ever-fascinating chamber music. Ensemble Transmission is heard in a variety of configurations, including solo works, and the startling rendition of Vez for solo cello, here played with tremendous expressive range by Julie Trudeau, is a particular highlight. Sokolovic’s richlyContinue reading “Ana Sokolovic and Ensemble Transmission. Folklore Imaginaire.”
Quatuor Bozzini. Aldo Clementi: Momento.
The press release for Quatuor Bozzini’s new Aldo Clementi portrait disc alludes, in the form of a quote from the composer, to a peculiar sort of metamusical morbidity that was allegedly integral to his thinking. While his eldritch outlook is documented elsewhere as well, what is transmitted more clearly through this typically lucid Bozzini recordingContinue reading “Quatuor Bozzini. Aldo Clementi: Momento.”