CD Review | Portraits, Emily Carr String Quartet (Leaf Music)

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Emily Carr String Quartet: Müge Büyükçelen and Cory Balzer, violins; Mieka Michaux, viola; Alasdair Monet, cello; Marion Newman, mezzo-soprano.
Leaf Music
2024

Much like Quebec’s Quatuor Molinari, the Emily Carr String Quartet specializes in contemporary musical repertoire and has chosen to adopt the name of a local painter. Originally from Victoria, British Columbia, the ensemble paid tribute to her in 2011 and 2014 with the premieres of Stories by Klee Wyck and Feathers by Tobin Stokes. Since then, they have commissioned other works by Western Canadian composers, also inspired by the work of Emily Carr. These include Jocelyn Morlock’s Big Raven in 2015 and Jared Miller’s Strangled by Growth in 2016. For all the merits of these pieces, the aural experience is somewhat arid.

With its use of spoken word, Feathers provides a more theatrical, dramatic approach to the painter’s work (in this case, texts from her diaries, sketchbooks and Anne Newlands’ 1996 biography) than a properly musical one. The brevity of each of the 9 pieces in the cycle, with the exception of “Sanitorium,” prevents the listener from losing themselves to listening. It’s not until Big Raven that we’re transported into larger aural spaces, although the pizzicatos bring the listener back to something very intimate, of the order of a haunting anguish.  

In Strangled by Growth, one can’t help but assume that the effects of the plucked strings – or brushed, to bring out the harmonics – lend themselves better to the context of a concert, with appropriate acoustics, than a recording. Beloved of the Sky‘s danceable allure, rich sonorities and stretched melodic lines make the work particularly appealing. The final cycle, Stories by Klee Wyck, suffers from the same pitfall as Feathers, namely that it is based on a text, which would be more effective and better understood if read beforehand. This would allow listeners to grasp the meaning of the music, without words. Marion Newman, mezzo-soprano from Kwagiulth and Stó:lō First Nations, appears on the album’s final piece, “Canoë,” which is also the most successful of the cycle.

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