Nova Scotia-based composer Amy Brandon’s academic research into guitar skill acquisition has required her to have a firm grasp of numerous disciplines, including cognitive psychology, kinesiology, and neuroscience. The titles she gives her compositions invite a gloss, and in the notes accompanying this new release, she obliges: In Euclidean geometry, “Affine” signifies a transformation preserving parallelism; in ancient Hebrew, “Tsiyr” may indicate an envoy, or the hinge of a door. Importantly, beyond such evident erudition, Brandon takes palpable delight in words, in their physical form as well as in the conceptual relationships they may engender.
Comparably, in Brandon’s compositions she relishes sound as a malleable material, as well as appreciating its structural and developmental potential. The eight pieces on Lysis, diverse in character and scored for a variety of instrumental combinations, manifest considerable constructive intelligence, yet each is physically involving, sonically dramatic, and not at all cerebral, in that word’s negative sense. The dynamo of excitement that animates Brandon’s disciplined inquiries also energizes her music, and the exhilaration of discovery reverberates through its forms.
Individual performers sound suitably engrossed, whether they are illuminating the timbral qualities of agitated air, as flutist Sarah Constant does on “Microchimerisms,” engaging with surprising spectral phenomena latent within the common tones of the harmonic series, as Quattuor Bozzini does on “Lysis,” or reflecting upon auditory communication over distance, as guitarist Julian Bertino does on “Intermountainous,” shadowed by the composer’s own electronic trails. Brandon’s music embodies and transmits her inquisitive, exploratory spirit as it takes audible shape through the enactment of articulated perceptions.
Julian Cowley studied in London at University College, the Institute of United States Studies and King’s College, where his doctoral thesis on postmodern fiction was supervised by Eric Mottram. Cowley has lectured and published extensively on literature and cultural studies, and is now a freelance writer on music. He has contributed to every issue of The Wire magazine since 1998, and in recent years has published a number of articles and reviews in Musicworks and other adventurous publications. He lives in Hertfordshire, England, a short distance north of London.