Volume 26 Issue 4 - December 2020 / January 2021

disc that’s sure to enliven – and puzzle –
any holiday gathering with its joyful audacity.
Plus where else would you be able to
hear a straight recitation of ‘Twas the Night
before Christmas decorated with baubles
of dissonant stop-time whinnies, shakes
and honks?
Ken Waxman
POT POURRI
Tales of Solace
Stephan Moccio
Decca Records (stephanmoccio.com)
! WholeNote
readers may be
familiar with
Stephan Moccio
from his acclaimed
work as a worldclass
songwriter,
penning megahits
for such artists as
Celine Dion, Miley
Cyrus and Avril Levigne. On this recording,
however, Moccio leaves behind his songwriting
chair for the piano bench, as he
returns to the keyboard and his beloved classical
roots, with stunning results.
Tales of Solace offers us 16 beautifully
crafted and intimate vignettes, each with its
own particular sonic and thematic signature,
united throughout by Maccio’s poetic touch
and great command of harmony, timing and
space. Vaguely familiar sounding melodic
motifs rise to the surface, only to disappear
back into the rolling and shifting musical
landscape, cinematic, yet intimate in its scope
and detail.
Many of the pieces are deeply personal:
Through Oscar’s Eyes is for his son, and
features a delicate melody over rolling arpeggiated
figures. La Fille Aux Pouvoirs Magiques
unfolds like a beautiful meditation, an
acknowledgement for someone special in his
life. All are performed and recorded on his
custom-built Yamaha YUS5 piano.
It takes a great deal of patience and deep
listening to create this kind of music. Thank
you, Stephan Moccio, for one of the finest and
most memorable releases of the year – one
to treasure.
Barry Livingston
Mistral
Tamar Ilana & Ventanas
Independent (tamarilana.com)
! Tamar Ilana
had been dancing
and singing in the
flamenco/Middle
Eastern/Balkan
music realm since
she was a girl, so
although still relatively
young, she’s
now somewhat of a global-music veteran. She
comes by it honestly, as her mother, Dr. Judith
Cohen, is a respected ethnomusicologist who
Ilana credits with introducing her to many of
the styles of music on this lovely album.
Mistral is the third release by the Torontobased
group, and Ilana and her Ventanas
bandmates cover off a range of instruments
and styles. All contribute vocals in an impressive
seven different languages. Percussionist
Derek Gray does multiple duty on Tibetan
singing bowls, cymbals, darbuka, djembe,
cajon and good ol’ drum kit. Demetri
Petsalakis’ string mastery shines on oud,
lyra and saz. Benjamin Barile’s assertive
guitar playing is an excellent foil for Ilana’s
strong, emotive singing. Barille also wrote
two rousing flamenco tunes, and Jessica
Hana Deutsch contributed several songs –
including a lovely instrumental honouring
Martin Luther King Jr. – along with versatile
violin and viola playing throughout. Bass
player Justin Gray co-produced the album and
has kept it relatively raw, letting the musicians’
talent and passion come through in an
authentic way. The lyrics (helpfully translated
in the liner notes) reveal themes of longing,
loss and love – themes that unite us all, no
matter where we’re from.
Cathy Riches
Chants des Trois Cours
Lamia Yared & Invités
Independent (lamiayared.com)
! At its greatest
extent the vast
Ottoman Empire,
centred in presentday
Turkey, reached
northwest to
Hungary, east to
Persia, south to
the Middle East
and westward along North Africa. As musicians
travelled from court to court within
the empire they transported, absorbed and
ultimately transformed multiple music practices.
Over the scope of 15 tracks on Chants
des Trois Cours, commanding Lebanese-
Canadian singer and music director Lamia
Yared plus seven virtuoso musician “friends”
explore three of the cultures that contributed
to the Ottoman musical world. This ambitious
album of songs and instrumental repertoire
draws from the art music of period Turkish,
Arabic and Persian composers and performance
traditions.
Among the album’s delights are the songs
in muwashshah, the musical form from
Aleppo, Syria with Arabic-Andalusian poetic
roots. Jalla Man Ansha Jamalak (A Tribute to
Your Beauty), set in maqam Awj Iraq and in
the Mrabaa metre of 13 slow beats, is a beautifully
performed example.
Montreal-based Yared’s voice soars above
her group of outstanding instrumentalists:
Nazih Borish (oud), Reza Abaee (ghaychak),
Elham Manouchehri (tar), Joseph
Khoury (riq and bendir) and Ziya Tabassian
(tombak). Cellist Noémy Braun and bassist
Jérémi Roy ably enrich the album’s bottom
end. Didem Başar, featured on Turkish kanun,
also provided the nuanced and very effective
arrangements.
But it is Yared who brings Chants des
Trois Cours to life. Propelled by her elegant
vocalism, linguistic skills and artistic vision,
she piques our interest in the rich musical
legacy of this multicontinental, multicultural
empire. That this impressive achievement was
conceived and produced in Montreal is yet
another wonder.
Andrew Timar
Saqqara
Esbe
New Cat Music (esbemusic.uk)
! Esbe does not
score the instruments
and sounds
she needs before
recording her
music. As she
herself puts it,
she allows serendipity
to take her
on its own particular journey until there is
one unified picture. And this CD presents
a highly varied picture as Esbe travels from
Egypt (hence Saqqara, site of Egypt’s oldest
Step pyramid) through India, Sri Lanka and
North Africa.
In fact, modern boundaries count for
nothing as Esbe casts her sensuous veil
of voice and instrument (and even sound
effect) over her listeners, who feel themselves
entranced within the lingering and
languorous sounds of traditional desertscapes.
And yet the sounds of the desert
are not the only ones on Esbe’s CD. She
employs the Indian tabla, tambourine and
various synthetic sounds to create her
own Qawaali Dance, a tribute to a spirited
and demanding dance form. Her fondness for
the rich music of India leads to Eyes of blue, a
lovesong of intense beauty.
Paint the moon is perhaps the most
distinctive track. It starts with the most lively
beat on the CD, before introducing heartfelt
lyrics described by Esbe as perhaps a plea by
the moon for an end to the natural depletion
of the world by humanity.
Esbe’s final composition inspired by the
desert is Bedouin Prince, reflecting the longstanding
presence of the Bedouin in North
Africa. Its mystic percussion part sets the
backdrop for some highly romantic thoughts.
In fact, looking at the CD as a whole, those of
the romantic persuasion can invite a significant
other round, dim the lights and listen
to Saqqara...
Michael Schwartz
thewholenote.com December 2020 / January 2021 | 57