If I were to pick one band to illus­trate the con­vo­luted rock trends of the 1980’s, it would be The Cult. This noto­ri­ously frac­tious, unpre­dictable, and peri­patetic band usu­ally hov­ered some­where in between the Doors and AC/DC in its over­all sound, but ven­tured into all sorts of oth­er moods. Despite their noto­ri­ous inter­nal bick­er­ing and tem­po­rary split-ups, they have man­aged to remain a force in rock for a quar­ter cen­tury. Any­one with a seri­ous rock col­lec­tion is like­ly to own copies of Love (my own favourite) and Son­ic Tem­ple. Their Cana­dian tour last year still pulled in huge crowds, espe­cially here in Toron­to. Dur­ing one of their tem­po­rary split-ups, lead singer Ian Ast­bury start­ed up a garage band called Holy Bar­bar­ians, which record­ed only this one album, in 1999. Cream is a decent album, worth play­ing now and then, but it illus­trates how much The Cult ben­e­fit­ed from the fine gui­tar play­ing of Bil­ly Duffy. With­out him to bal­ance Ast­bury, the singer often comes across too heavy-hand­ed. Some of the songs seem stagy and melo­dra­matic. But “Opi­um” is first rate, and “Broth­er Fights” is quite good, too. If you are a Cult fan, pick up this album, not only for the sake of com­plete­ness, but to show, by con­trast, just how the com­bi­na­tion of Duffy and Ast­bury worked.

17575. The Music of Islam: Vol­ume 1 — Al Qahi­rah [Music of Cairo]
17576. (Mau­rice Rav­el) Séré­nade grotesque
17577. (Mau­rice Rav­el) Valses nobles et sentimentales
17578. (Thelo­nius Monk) Thelo­nius Monk with John Coltrane — The Com­plete April-July 1957
. . . . . Recordings
17579. (Cow­boy Junkies) The Cau­tion Horses
17580. (Wil­helm Sten­ham­mar) Snöfrid, Op.5
17581. (Wil­helm Sten­ham­mar) Mel­lanspel ur kan­tat­en “Sån­gen”, Op.44
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Marie-Élaine Thib­ert is a Mon­treal singer with a strong voice, which is reminis­cent of Bar­bara Streisand’s. She first came to pub­lic atten­tion when she belt­ed out Jacques Brel’s tech­ni­cally dif­fi­cult song “La quête”, on Quebec’s major tal­ent show, Star Académie. The sta­di­um-show-tunes kind of stuff is not real­ly my kind of music, but I can appre­ci­ate the tal­ent here. Que­bec seems to grow high­ly pro­fes­sional main­stream singers as eas­ily as British Colum­bia grows mar­i­juana. There seems to be an end­less sup­ply. But only a few of them, such as Céline Dion, break out into the rest of the world. On the strength of this album, which has con­fi­dent show­man­ship, I would guess that she will make it out, prob­a­bly first in Europe. I haven’t heard all her sec­ond album, Comme ça, but it has a hit in a cov­er of Monique Leyrac’s old stan­dard “Pour cet amour”, a duet with Chris deBurgh (a trans­la­tion of “Lone­ly Sky”), and a very fine, sub­tle song I’ve heard online, “Les herbes hautes”.

Lucian­not Pavarot­ti and James Brown

Well, there’s not much I can say about Pavarot­ti that oth­ers aren’t bet­ter qual­i­fied to say. He is one of those fig­ures that steps out of a genre. Peo­ple who hard­ly ever lis­ten to jazz know Louis Arm­strong, peo­ple who hard­ly ever lis­ten to opera know Pavarot­ti, who suc­cess­fully stepped into the shoes of Caru­so as the ambas­sador of opera to the broad pub­lic. He ful­filled the role bril­liantly, using his com­i­cal, un-threat­en­ing appear­ance to advan­tage. It was as if your favourite jol­ly uncle had super-pow­ers, which he only used after din­ner. On hear­ing of his death, I played his won­der­ful duet with James Brown, and his rather pecu­liar one with Lou Reed. Then I went through Pavarotti’s Great­est Hits, with his famed arias from Rigo­letto and L’élisir d’Amore, among oth­ers. Then I played his album of Neapoli­tan folk songs, O Sole Mio, and his album of Christ­mas car­ols, O Holy Night. Over the course of the next two days, I played a few entire operas in which he starred: Bellini’s Beat­rice di Ten­da, and I Puri­tani, where he sang with Joan Suther­land, one of the few women with the stature and lung pow­er to stand up to him in the ring; as well as an ear­ly per­for­mance of Puccini’s La Bohème, with Freni, direct­ed by von Karajan.

Ten years ago, CBC radio broad­cast Robert Volkmann’s Sym­phony #1 in D. I was charmed by it. The announc­er said that it sound­ed like “a for­got­ten work by Brahms”. True enough, and Volkmann’s obscu­rity could eas­ily be explained by say­ing he was one of Brahms’ many imi­ta­tors. But that sym­phony was com­posed in 1862, and Brahms’ first sym­phony didn’t appear until four­teen years lat­er. I’ve nev­er been able to find a copy of that sym­phony, and didn’t hear the whole thing on the CBC broad­cast, so it isn’t list­ed in my lis­ten­ing files. But I have obtained two works by him, the Konz­ert­stück for Piano & Orches­tra, and the Cel­lo Con­certo. Both are enter­tain­ing and well-craft­ed, but not over­whelm­ing. The cel­lo con­certo is worth sev­eral lis­tens. Both works reveal his real influ­ence: Schu­mann. Volk­mann lived from 1815 to 1883. He was born in Sax­ony, spent a short stint in Prague, then the rest of his life in Budapest. He was respect­ed and often played in his life­time, but fell out of the reper­tory after his death. It’s more fair to say that he was a seri­ous com­poser whose work fol­lowed on Schu­mann and antic­i­pated Brahms, whom he influ­enced sig­nif­i­cantly. This is not dis­mis­sible as mere imi­ta­tion. But time has a way of cast­ing off such in-betweens.

17498. (Gus­tav Mahler) Das Kla­gende Lied [s. Shaguch, DeY­oung, Moser, Leiferkus] 
17499. (Illu­mi­nati) The Illu­mi­nati [with bonus bootlegs]
17500. (Alan Hov­haness) Sym­pho­ny #24, Op.273 “Maj­nun”
17501. (Oscar Peter­son) Oscar Peter­son Plays Duke Ellington
17502. Otan­tic Azer­bay­can Rek­sleri 2: Music of Azerbaijan
17503. (Fred­er­ick Delius) A Walk to the Par­adise Garden
17504. On Mar­co Polo’s Road: The Musi­cians of Kun­duz and Faizabad
17505. (Robert Volk­mann) Konz­ert­stück for Piano and Orches­tra, Op.42
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Har­ry Somers (1925–1999) was prob­a­bly the most respect­ed com­poser in Toron­to dur­ing his gen­er­a­tion. The seri­al­ist John Weinzweig found him com­pos­ing, self-taught, as a teenag­er, and encour­aged him to train vig­or­ously in both tra­di­tional har­mony and in avant-garde twelve-tone tech­niques. He end­ed up train­ing under the fair­ly con­ser­v­a­tive French com­poser, Dar­ius Mil­haud. In the end, he set­tled on an eclec­tic style. Up until now, all I’ve lis­tened to close­ly was his just­ly pop­u­lar Five Songs from New­found­land Out­ports. But today, I lis­tened to a col­lec­tion of his songs, both sec­u­lar and sacred, by the Elmer Isler Singers. I was sur­prised at their com­bi­na­tion of sassy humour — “Spot­ted Snakes” is the best exam­ple of that — and lyri­cal beau­ty. The “Three Songs of New France” are real­ly fine, quite as good as the famed New­found­land set. The sacred pieces com­bine con­ven­tional rev­er­ence with some uncon­ven­tional twists. I par­tic­u­larly like “God The Mas­ter of This Scene” and “Bless’d Is the Gar­den of the Lord”. There’s a touch of Mes­si­aen in these, but in a clean-cut, whole­some Toron­to boy way. Cana­dian com­posers, even when they see them­selves as bad boys, tend to be polite and well-scrubbed behind the ears. It’s our kismet.

The Huel­gas Ensem­ble, under the direc­tion of Paul Van Nev­el, put togeth­er a col­lec­tion of Renais­sance poly­phonic works for large choirs, which they called “Utopia Tri­umphans”. In fact, these works are for huge choirs. It starts with Thomas Tallis’ aston­ish­ing 40-part motet Spem in ali­um, and ends with Alessan­dro Striggio’s 40-part Ecce beat­am lucem. Striggio’s piece was per­formed in Eng­land in 1567, and caused such a stir that it was tak­en as a chal­lenge. It is said that Tallis was com­mis­sioned to com­pose an “answer”, and Spem in ali­um was the result (how­ever some author­i­ties doubt this story).

Motets on this scale are very dif­fi­cult to mount. The man­u­script kicked around for cen­turies, but no doubt those who looked at it shrugged their shoul­ders. Inter­est­ing, but too much work to put on, and Tallis had lit­tle sell­ing pow­er. His rep­u­ta­tion was eclipsed by his pupil William Byrd, and if Ralph Vaugh­an Williams had not com­posed his Fan­ta­sia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, few would have heard his name. But in 1965, the choir of King’s Col­lege Cam­bridge took a chance, and record­ed it. Sub­se­quently, there was a revival of inter­est in Tallis, and today I noticed a site list­ing it among the “top 10 essen­tial choral pieces”. There have been many record­ings of it, the most well known being that of the Tallis Schol­ars. Per­haps the most amaz­ing trib­ute to the work is in the Nation­al Gallery of Cana­da, in Ottawa. Here, Maya 3D mod­el­ing soft­ware, laser scan­ning and pho­togram­me­try were used to accu­rately recre­ate the inte­rior of a beau­ti­ful con­vent chapel which, unfor­tu­nately, had to be demol­ished. With­in this mod­el (where even the “sun­light” in the stained glass is arti­fi­cial), forty speak­ers set around the chapel each play the sound of a sin­gle voice of the forty-part choir, allow­ing for an espe­cially intense, and vari­able expe­ri­ence of the piece. Read more »

17395. (Aztec Cam­era) Stray
17396. (Johannes Brahms) Piano Trio #1 in B, Op.8
17397. (Johannes Brahms) Piano Trio #2 in C, Op.87
17398. (Johannes Brahms) Piano Trio #3 in C Minor, Op.101
17399. (Johannes Brahms) Piano Trio #4 in A, Op. Posth.
(Homayun Sakhi) The Art of the Afghan Rubâb:
. . . . 17400. (Homayun Sakhi) Raga Madhuvanti
. . . . 17401. (Homayun Sakhi) Raga Yaman
. . . . 17402. (Homayun Sakhi) Kataghani
17403. (Karol Szy­manows­ki) Vio­lin Con­cer­to #1, Op.35
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One of the finest singers in West­ern Cana­da, Sandy Scofield glides effort­lessly from her Métis and Cree musi­cal roots into a high-lev­el syn­the­sis of jazz, blues, rock and pop. Long known in abo­rig­i­nal music cir­cles, she deserves to break out into the glob­al music scene. Her music is orig­i­nal, refined, and intel­li­gent. I pos­sess three of her four albums, Dirty Riv­er (1994), Riel’s Road (2000), and Ket­wam (2002). I have yet to hear all of this year’s release, Nikawiy Askiy, but I’ve heard three songs from it, and they clear­ly indi­cate that her musi­cal evo­lu­tion is con­tin­u­ing with­out hin­drance. Riel’s Road is prob­a­bly the best intro­duc­tion to her work, open­ing with the stun­ning “Beat the Drum (Gath­er­ing Song)”, and going on to explore emo­tion­ally the after­math and con­se­quences of the most dra­matic events in post-Con­fed­er­a­tion Canada’s his­tory, the Métis upris­ing and death of Louis Riel. How­ever, most of the songs on this album have a folk-jazz feel­ing. On Ket­wam, which focus­es on much more tra­di­tional abo­rig­i­nal-métis mate­r­ial, she col­lab­o­rates with the vocal trio Nit­si­wakun, of which she is one mem­ber (the oth­er two are Lisa Saza­ma and Shak­ti Hayes), with fid­dle Daniel Lapp, and with vocal­ist Win­ston Wut­tunee. The Cree-lan­guage songs are the most pow­er­ful. The album is tru­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive. Some are the finest moments belong to Hayes on “Nit­si­mos” and to “Wut­tunee” on “Tap­weh” (a tra­di­tional round dance that would fit in at any west­ern powow).