Here's your disc of the week for June 16, 2013. Each week CBC Radio 2's In Concert looks at new classical music releases and selects one recording that you'll want to know about.
Album: Woman Runs with Wolves.
Artist: Beverley Johnston, percussion, and guests.
Repertoire: Works by Tim Brady, Christos Hatzis, Alice Ping Yee Ho, David Occhipinti, Micheline Roi and Laura Silberberg.
Label: Centrediscs.
Beverley Johnston is a terrific Canadian percussionist with an apparently unlimited appetite for musical exploration. At least that seems to be the case on her latest CD, the enigmatically titled Woman Runs with Wolves, a collection of works by six Canadian composers that offers a sampling of some of the latest trends in contemporary music, often centred around ideas of myth and ritual.
On this new Centredisc release, Johnston is running with a pack of Canadian composers with a wide range of influences and inclinations. In addition to working with a studio full of percussion instruments — all manner of drums, gongs, marimba, crotales — there are spoken-word samples, electronic effects and cameo appearances by flutist Susan Hoeppner, soprano Lauren Margison and pianist Pamela Reimer.
The composers liberally blend live acoustic performances and electronic sounds. One selection by Silberberg borrows from dubstep, the electronic dance music, while another, Tim Brady's Rant!, is based on a Rick Mercer TV editorial.
There's a lyrical and delicate study for marimba by David Occhipinti entitled Summit. And Christos Hatzis, Johnston's partner and frequent musical collaborator, contributes three selections borrowing from both gangsta rap and the Inuit tradition of throat singing.
It's a fascinating journey through which Johnston says she recapturing her "soul and expression in a fast-paced and sometimes incomprehensible world."
Hop on. It's a wild, invigorating ride.
- LISTEN
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Rant! by Tim Brady. Performed by percussionist Beverley Johnston and pianist Pamela Reimer.
Related:
Beverley Johnston's CBC Music Artist page
Remembering Mario Bernardi
Disc of the week: Jon Kimura Parker plays The Rite of Spring