Eight years ago Amy Brandon released Scavenger, an album of her own classical guitar playing infused with jazz cadences, improvisation, and electronic treatments. The Canadian has largely put down her instrument to write for others, and on her first portrait album, her compositional voice reveals a staggering growth. Each of these eight works occupy richly varied spaces. Intermountainous, from 2017, captures an early stage of that transformation, with Brandon increasingly saturating the virtuosic 10-string guitar playing of Julian Bertino — which in itself is rich in microtonal overtones and jagged phrases—in ghostly electronics. But the subsequent pieces find her busting out of any single artistic mode. The terse opening work “microchimerisms,” played by flutist Sara Constant, is a texture-driven abstraction that aptly sets the tone for what follows—including “threads,” a bruising series of swelling gestures played by the string trio Chartreuse, which are loaded with microtonal bursts, visceral, slashing noise, and electrifying harmonies. Caduceus veers from down-tuned cello figures played by India Gailey and Leah Plave into the lush resonance of upper register gestures, haloed and enhanced by the composer’s sizzling electronics. Microtonal piano patterns played by Daniel Añez set the character for the remarkable Tsiyr, cleaved by the jittery arco lines played by Quatuor Bozzini and the darting flute and clarinet of Jeffrey Stonehouse and Gwénaëlle Ratouit. Affine offers a constellation of staccato sounds which are gradually subsumed in acrid brass and reed harmonies, while Simulacra reveals Brandon’s feel for orchestral writing, with cellist Jeffrey Ziegler delivering a fierce solo amid the monumental swelling and receding melodic grandiosity of Symphony Nova Scotia. The album concludes with Bozzini tackling the title piece, a slow ascent from whispery shadows to hell-bent microtonality that leaves the listener off-balance and thirsting for more.
