Reflecting one person’s imagination, musical composition is an intimate art. But, especially if the creation is wide ranging and sonically multihued, sympathetic interpreters are needed to express the composer’s vision. As this group of CDs demonstrates, notable interpretations of a composer’s singular vision can illuminate the writers’ concepts. […]
For her part, Montreal percussionist Danielle Palardy Roger has such a consistent sonic concept that she can release a disc such as Le caillou with seven performances from 1998 to 2013 and have the disc sound as if came from one session. Featuring a shifting cast of 23 musicians called Ensemble SuperMusique, most tracks are variations on her original composition Le caillou (the pebble), a multi-faceted game piece which allows improvisers to collaborate on its musical development. Over the CD’s course everything from bel canto-like whoops to Sun Ra-like interplanetary percussion rumbles to top-of-range clarinet shrills and turntable scratching takes centre stage. With sequences that shift from rustic fiddle-and-guitar interludes to rock-styled drumming and intense jazz-like sax-and trombone lick trading, part of the fun for the listener being kept off balance. But this flexibility includes consistency. Even contributions from ebullient French bassist Joëlle Léandre, featured on one track, are no more prominent than others. Although The Stone the one Manhattan recorded tune is the most challenging in its strident stropped string and slapped percussion outlay, the defining track is Le cristal. Seemingly encompassing something for everyone from straight-ahead swing and martial rhythms, to splayed rock-guitar chords, dog-whistle altissimo to closely harmonized woodwinds the track encompasses bedlam, baroque and bop, Highlighted by a well-paced duet between Jean-Denis Levasseur’s clarinet and Jean Derome’s also sax, the climax preserves the beat and theme with jumping strings and to-the-point percussion. […]
