present a Cushion Concen featuring Les Boreades de Montreal with Helene Plouffe, among others, at the Brigantine Room. Sax Summit Phil Dwyer w/Blake; Perry; Murley; Rieu; Ryga; White; . Eisenman; Swainson; Clarke CBC Records TRCD 3001 The danger in any "AU Star" jazz session is that the whole exercise can turn into a self-indulgent di~play ofone-upmanship. This is .certainly NOT the case with the Sax Summit CD. This disc presents seven excellent Canadian saxophonists: Phil Dwye~ (tenor, soprano and music direction); Seamus Blake (tenor), P.J . Petry (alto) , Mike Murley (tenor and soprano), Yannick Rieu (tenor) -, Campbell Ryga (alto), and Per;ry White (baritone). The recording was · done during a live concert at Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto in January of2001. Each musician has room to stretch out and strut his stuff, but the resultil)g improvisations are more akin to interesting conversations, rather than clashes of ego. · The ten curies presented on the CD include such jam session classics as Blues Up and Down, Body & Soul, My Favorite Things , Work Song and Billie 's Bounce. Dwyer contr_ibutes his arranging skills and his own tune Appearing Nightly to the recording. The arrangements (necessary with ten musicians) are excellent. The balance between solo room and ensemble passages is just right. I highly recommend this disc 7 it's unlikely you'll ever get a chance to It's a long time since you've heard hear this combinatiqn of players.live any of these once ubiquitous tunes any time soon. That is unless there's played with such unerring style and a Sax Summit Two disc in the works. elan: The Fleet's Jn, Dream Love, Irr the meantime, I'm going to put on Marcheta, One Night ofLove, Tan Blues Up & Down andTevel in the gerine and others written by Victor glorious sound of four of. the best Schertzinger (1880-1941). Or these tenor players on the Jazz scene today. treasures by Hoagy ·carmichael Merlin Williams . (1899-1981): Stardust, Little Old ' Lady, Georgia on my Mind, and One Concert note: Deleon White Gal- MominginMay. Vincent Youmans' lery's Now's the Time lau Series (1898-1946)extensive6utputincluded features Mike Murley & Dave Teafof Two, Without a Song, Or Occhipinti, Nov 3 at 2:00 and the Earl chids in the Moonlight, Time on My Seymour · Memorial Saxophone Hawis, ancj the dance that helped put , Quartet with Phil Dwyer, Perry Astaire and Rogers (Fred and Gin White , John Johnson & David ger, thatis)ontothemoviemarquees, French, Dec 1at2:00. U ofT Fae- The Carioca. . ulty of Music presents Up Close and Robert Farnan: born in Torontd in Personal with the Faculty Saxophone 1917, took the Canadian Band of the Quartet, Nov 27, 12:10 in Walter AllieoExpedfrionary 'ForcestoEng: Hall. land in 1944. After associatio'ns with many famous bands of the era he built his own orchestra. Acclaimed by his WORTH REPEATING peers, everyone but everyone wanted him behind them. His arrangements were the ultimate in sophistication and his many British Decca recordings were best sellers. The 23 tracks selected for this CD date from 1951/52. The ensemble and the arrangements are almost unique. Happily, Vocalion has five other Farnan discs . Bruce Surtees The Music of Victor Schertzinger, Hoagy Carmichael and Vincent Youmans Robert Farnon and his Orchestra; Johnston Singers Vocation CDLK 4100 One listen to any qf the 23 tracks will inform you that this is a re-issue. Not because of the sound which is good British mono, but because they don't play that way anymore, nor much of this repertoire neither. For those who enjoyed the best of these three American composers of the 20's and 30's, listening to this disc is like going to heaven. Really! INDIE LIST . Romantic Genis . Christina Petrowska Quilico Weispringe Productions (Independent) The music on this disc is like a refreshing spring breeze through an open window. Petrowska Quilico plays with an enviable grace and ease, making the most difficult of the works se~m effortless. An incredible 32 selections are packed into the 63-minute programme. All fall into the category of miniatures, beginning with Alkan and encompassing a wide raiige of the genre. The oldest composer represented is Josef Kossovits ( 1750- 1824), with Nikolay Rakov (1908- 1990) being the most recent. Wellknown heavyweights such as Liszt, Nielsen and Rachmaninoff are in Cluded. Petrowska Quilico's pianistic skill is nicely complimented by the benign sound ofCBC's Glenn Gould Studio and one of its Steinway D-274 's. A slight trace of low-frequency thump, an unfortunate tendency in sess·ions with closely miked pianos on wood floors, is noticeable in Grondalil's Summer Song, Op.45, No.3. Overall, though, producer M ichae I Coghlan has done an excellent job. Tht; five-panel insert has notes by scholar William Westcott, spreading over all the panels: Graphic designer Adriana Dossena has superimposed Westcott's text over a background comprised of a greyed-out enlarged fragment of the cover drawing, a work created by the pianist herself.. The recording is dedicated to the pianist's late husband, baritone Louis Quilico. Photos of the couple in happier times are included in the insert. This disc brings much enjoyment and would be an excellent choice for a: Christmas gift. JohnS. Gray Editor's note: Christina Petrowska Quilico will perform PierreBoulez' First Sonata at the presentation of the International Glenn Gould Prize to M_r. Boulez on November 24 (by invttatwn only). Later this month Welspringe will release "Gems with.
an Edge", a re-issue of Petrowska Quilico 's 1970s recordings of works by Messiaen, Boulez, Bregent, Davidovsky and Coulombe Saint Marcoiir. DISCS OF THE MONTH November is New Music Month Canadian Composer Portraits Violet Archer Centrediscs CMCCD 8502 Jean Papineau-Couture Centrediscs CMCCD 8602 Oskar Morawetz Centrediscs CMCC:D 8702 Malcolm Forsyth Centrediscs CMCCD 8802 R. Murray Schafer Centrediscs CMCCD 8902 This month the Canadian Music Centre will launch the second installment of its Canadian Composer Portraits series produced in conjunction with the CBC and funded by the Canada Council and Canadian Heritage. As with the first set of offerings (reviewed in the July/August 2002 issue ofWholeNote) each of these five portraits include an hour-long radio documentary about the composer and an additional disc featuring three or four major works i11 their entirety. Aficionados of the music ·Of R. Violet Archer is well represented by Murray Schafer will be pleased to the cantata The Bell, dating from know that they no longer have to 1949, the Sinfonietta of 1968 and the commit to an eight-day wilderness String Quartet No.3 from 1981, a adventure to get at least a taste of stunning work which, forty years after the fact, still shows the influence the final installment of the Patria series. For the 1 past ten years of her formative teacher Bela Bartok. The disc also includes the Pian0 Schafer and his "wolves", a group of dedicated participants now numbering about 75, have been creating this same performance, is already TrioNo.2from 1957, but the trio, in a ritual musical drama each summer available on a compact disc distributed by the Canadian Music Centre. in the wilderness of the Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve entitled Surely Archer would have been And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon. This much better served by the inclusion epilogue to the series of ten musictheatre works, created in a variety -· of Evocations ( 1987) for 2 pianos and orcqestra, a ·- work that was the pride of site-specific venues, has previ- of her later years. ously only been accessible to thos~ who were willing to dedicate a week of their sunimer (and every subsequent summer) to the work's creation. Schafer feels that "If Wolf Music went into a concert hall it ... would wither before the concentration pf listeners." He has however allowed a CBC recording team to attend the process and record some selected musical pieces from the wilderness experience. www.thewholenote.com 57
