With what felt, even to the heartiest among us, like a cruel and endless winter now safely tucked away in our collective memory (for a few months anyway), along comes Dream of Heat, a chilly, occasionally chilling musical evocation of the unfairest season. Montréaler Ida Toninato, who plays baritone sax and synthesizers, and Winnipeg-based Jennifer Thiessen, on viola and synths, originally created the precursor to D of H as a concert piece called Winter[City]Speaks. (On the album, producer Jason Sharp also plays synths.) And indeed, speaking voices—as well as some lovely singing by Thiessen and Toninato — are a prominent ingredient of the music. Over a mournfully descending viola figure and the (synthesized) sound of a distant but persistent arctic wind, the album opens with Thiessen, shivery and desperate, pleading, “I need warmth… I need shelter… l need heat.” On the album’s penultimate and most unsettling track, amid a crowded soundscape of growling, slowly pulsing synth, anxious chanting, scraping noises, and animalistic utterances, Toninato insists repeatedly, in a rhythmic near whisper, “I am… suffocating,” both before and after a ghastly series of screams issues forth from somewhere deep in the mix. Overall, though, the prevailing mood is more one of celestial melancholy or gentle foreboding than panic-stricken claustrophobia, with sax, viola, and voices offering intimations of warmth that contrast nicely with the icier, more ethereal synthetic textures. The seasons are, after all, a handy metaphor for the cycle of life and death, and ultimately Dream of Heat seems to affirm the former.

For those unaware, Dream of Heat explores the cycle of death and rebirth as manifested by the experience of winter. The arc of the album follows an isolated awareness descending into the subconscious horrors and hopes of hibernation dreams before warming and waking to the flow of life.

Written by Ida Toninato and Jennifer Thiessen for their live show Winter[City]Speaks, this project follows their first album The Space Between Us (Ambiances Magnétiques) which was nominated for Juno and Opus awards in 2019.

This new body of work began as sonic postcards exchanged by the two musicians during the solitude of lockdown in the winter of 2021. These seed recordings were then nurtured into compositions that expanded the duo’s initial acoustic palette of viola, viola d’amore, baritone saxophone and reverberant spaces to include their spoken and sung voices, original texts in French and English, electronics, effects and field recordings.

The journey leading to the album Dream of Heat was as personal as it was creative and musical—a story of friendship, of opening doors and portals, and of daring to show up in renewed ways.

On what is a simply incredible sophomore album from the dutifully focused composer-performer duo, they open on the emotively engaging I need warmth and that is backed by the willowy Bear, the more industrialized ebbs, echoes and notches of On a tellement rêvé, the veritably ethereal smoothness of Hot blood flow, the set rounding out on the rhythmically canorous I am suffocating, coming to a close on the impassioned nuances within Change.

Collaborating with performer-composer Jason Sharp on the production of the studio album continued the creative evolution of these six experimental songs, bringing a distinctive breadth and depth to the music while remaining grounded in the instrumental craft and imaginative vision that define the artistry of Toninato & Thiessen.

In the depths of winter and the icy isolation of the pandemic lockdown “sonic post-cards” were exchan ged between composers Ida Toninato, on baritone saxo-phone, and Jennifer Thiessen, on viola and viola d’amore. These instruments share many acoustic ranges and qualities, enabling the duo to enjoy and expand their balanced intersecting relationship. Continuing the musical collaboration begun in their JUNO-nominated The Space Between Us, Dream of Heat continues their close conversational style to create a meditation on death and rebirth through allusions of ice and warmth. Beginning with a spare, acoustic duet between viola and saxophone, the opening track I need warmth sneaks in a cold wind and spoken word; both artists plead for heat as their instruments intertwine. The intimacy of is immediate. The layers of voices thread and expand throughout the album, grounding the humanness that draws the listener in, and expertly layered synths and occasional beats by Jason Sharp swell and morph the album from the early acoustic seeds to ambient, jazz, folk and rock. The strong arc of the album maintains the core of the cycle of death and rebirth, despite each track being a singular style, distinct from the next. The lyrics are beautifully and cleanly delivered in both English and French, keeping the intimacy at its core.

The running saxophone ostinato on Bear builds toward On a tellement rêvé, a gorgeously indescribable track combining ambient, noise and rock. I am suffocating describes anxiety with bow scrapes and low-end pulsing under vocals, becoming almost punk in its urgency to become Change, a restful, water-borne intensity that brings us home with both tonality and lyrics. Dream of Heat is a truly beautiful and authentic story of the time for these two artists.

The Canadian duo of Ida Toninato (baritone saxophone, voice, synthesizers) and Jennifer Thiessen (viola, voice, synthesizers), plus an additional musician: Jason Sharp also credited on synthesizers, this is one of those albums where the resulting music is far more rich and creative than one would expect from the instrumentations. Of course, in having two female vocalist/multi-instrumentalists, really, anything is possible. There’s both a “post rock without the rock” feel present, and an avant pop edge to much of it, whilst it runs from moody neo classical, to ambient space jazz to many other realms, all bordering the avant-garde, yet never really steeping over the line.

Put out on the circuit via the Canadian Ambiances Magnetiques label on February 13th, 2k26 is Dream of Heat, the latest collaborational album affair cooked up and conceived by Ida Toninato and Jennifer Thiessen. Over the course of six pieces and almost 40 minutes of total playing time the two artists combine their skills in composition, lyricism, vocal performance and the skillful execution of their ideas on their respective instruments, saxophone and viola, later enhanced with overdubs and treated via electronic measures. Opening with the emotional and rather elegic, at times even ethereal sonic backdrop of I Need Warmth which is nicely contrasted by the absolute urgency of the Spoken Word passage in its intro as well as a deep, almost earth shaking ebb and flow of low end bass waves the artistic duo sets a tone and pace for things to come like the subsequently following nocturnal ambience of Bear, its specific spatiality and ever building intertwined melodic spirals which see viola and sax in a continuous, feverish and ever intensifying dialogue whereas Hot Blood Flow brings forth an almost mythical and certainly sacred feel hovering above and beyond the ordinary humans perception of three dimensional space and time whereas I Am Suffocating caters carefully layered vocals alongside wind swept minimalisms of probably electro-acoustic origin as well as deeply hidden quasi-rhythms of rather eerie and ritualistic nature just to name a few. An extremely intricate and beautifully intimate album. Recommended. Go check. Especially if Björk’s most ethereal and stripped down tunes from around the mid-90s struck a chord with you for a reason even though there is no direct parallels or specific connections to be drawn out here.

The baritone saxophone and viola form the foundation from which Ida Toninato & Jennifer Thiessen let their sounds flow out into the open, where the electric crackle of sonic freedom weaves itself into songs and structures. On their second collaboration, Dream of Heat (Ambiances Magnétiques, 13 February), the Franco-Canadian musicians weave the most delicate, melancholic sounds—spanning freak folk, post-rock and free noise—into fragile, one-off pieces, none of which resemble one another, yet which together form a wonderful whole of intimate beauty. The perfect winter album for the warm days ahead, for the budding hope that things will get better, that renewal and life are real.