CD Review | Alikeness, Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra Sinfonia

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Alikeness

Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra Sinfonia; Aiyun Huang, percussionist; Deantha Edmunds, soprano; Mark Fewer, violinist/conductor

Leaf Music, 2024

Alikeness is an album that encourages listeners to find connections with its diverse range of music. This album features the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra Sinfonia, percussionist Aiyun Huang, soprano Deantha Edmunds, and violinist and conductor Mark Fewer.

Alikeness offers a unique collection of all-Canadian, all-strings-based pieces including the world première of Deantha Edmunds’s Angmalukisaa (“round” in Inuktut), works by Serge Arcuri, Robert Carli, and a new strings arrangement of Matt Brubeck’s The Simple Life by Andrew Downing.

“If we don’t immediately understand something, we use a memory to help us relate,” says Fewer. The variety of music in Alikeness successfully demonstrates this principle. As an unfamiliar listener, I found myself drawing connections to movie scores as many of the songs were similarly grand, mysterious and, at times, eerie.

For example, the beginning of Andrew Downing’s string arrangement of The Simple Life, with its rhythmic plucking and sustained notes, recalls the score of a mystery film where someone sneaks around in the dark. Its sudden upbeat middle section seems to be out of a Disney movie falling-in-love montage. Fewer hopes to highlight this personal aspect of music listening and demonstrate how it helps us expand our musical horizons by giving an entry point into a piece.

All artists featured on the album are given their moment to shine. The opening tracks showcase Inuk classical singer Deantha Edmunds’s beautiful and precise operatic vocals. Likewise, Yoshiaki Onishi’s arrangement of the title track, Alikeness, introduces some dynamic and distinctive percussion sections performed by Aiyun Huang. I felt there was deliberate attention paid to understanding the strengths of each contributor and selecting pieces that highlight them. Alikeness, for example, was originally composed in 2015 for the St. Lawrence String Quartet and percussionist Aiyun Huang, so her familiarity and connection to the piece comes through in this recording.

Fewer says the album is inspired by “the human capacity to learn, adapt, and collaborate.” As listeners, we constantly colour and shape the music we listen to with our own experiences. This album, with its unique program, exemplifies how we are collaborators alongside the musicians, composers, and conductor. Alikeness encourages listeners to be curious about how they access its music and what their “alikeness” is to it.