Solo Canada

By Nick Ostrum

This review will feature a series of Canadian composers and musicians writing for and performing solo.

Cheryl Duvall - Patrick Gigue​̀​re: Intimes Exube​́ ​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 Exube​́​rances 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.