landscapes of memory (2024) solo piano music by Emilie Cecilia LeBel
Featuring: Luciane Cardassi and Wesley Shen
Credits: Recorded at the Betty Andrews Recital Hall, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, August 2023. Produced by: Emilie LeBel and Paul Talbott. Recording and Mix Engineer: Paul Talbott, Assistant Engineer: Reid Contreras Woelfe. Mastering: Graemme Brown, Zen Mastering. Graphic Design: Matt Ledger.
Contacts: Riparian Media https://riparianacoustics.ca/ and Redshift Records https://redshiftrecords.org/
About: Emilie Cecilia LeBel composes subtle, delicate music for ensembles and soloists that centres otherworldly sonics as it elegantly unfolds. While her music inhabits a space that often feels small in scale and muted in hue, the response it has elicited for the Alberta-based artist is anything but that. Just last year, she made her full-length recorded debut with field studies which not only garnered critical praise but also landed her a 2024 JUNO Nomination for Best Classical Composition. Previously, she was the Affiliate Composer with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (2018-2022) (she is now their Composer Advisor), Composer-in-Residence with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada (2015), and received awards such as the Land’s End Ensemble Composer Competition (2016), Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award (2015), Canadian Music Centre Toronto Emerging Composer Award (2012), and the Canadian Federation of University Women Elizabeth Massey Award (2012). The revered English conductor Sir Andrew Davis once praised her for “writing music that reflects her intelligence and audaciousness.”
LeBel’s second offering, also for the Redshift imprint features a diptych of long-form piano solos, each exceeding half an hour, each interpreted by the work’s commissioner. The two pieces share a number of features. In addition to their languid pacing and chromatic-but-euphonious harmonic profile, both employ a droning backdrop produced by placing EBows—electromagnetic exciters traditionally used on electric guitar—inside the piano causing the strings they are set upon to vibrate of their own accord.
The underlying inspirations are also related, each dealing with ostensible stasis in natural scenarios that bely a complex, minute interplay of various forces. “ghost geography” bears a dedication to ‘the North Saskatchewan River – its many iterations, its ghosts’, while “pale forms in uncommon light” was written for the ‘montane ecoregion of Alberta – the many iterations of light patterns that filter through the douglas-fir, trembling aspen, engelmann spruce, and lodgepole pine.’
The fact that she chose piano to render these themes makes considerable sense, especially given her approach here. The instrument presents a similar situation where its outward appearance of uniformity cloaks a dynamic world of resonance and colour. Apart from the soft glow of the EBows, LeBel’s writing uses conventional piano technique exclusively. However, her sensitivity toward how articulation and velocity activate various overtones on the piano introduces a vivid dimensionality to the sound of these works—one that’s magnified and extended through the sustained EBow tones.
In using said drones, she establishes what appears to be a fixed element in each piece, yet with the way they both unfold, the drones draw the listener deeper into the internal motion of the piano’s sound.
Rather than feeling like constant hovering pitch, the low drone on “ghost geography,” performed by Toronto keyboard virtuoso Wesley Shen, registers at the subliminal level, blending in discreetly with the long tails of every note that Shen plays. It’s when one attempts to follow any given sonority all the way to its point of decay that the effect of the EBow becomes more evident. With just this one continuous tone throughout the piece, LeBel opens up a space in the piano where all the instrument’s resonances seem to pool magically, never disappearing altogether.
Straight away the relationship between keyed and sustained elements on “pale forms in uncommon light” is different. Sitting square in the middle register of the piano, the EBow’s rounded hum swells into the space between each gesture that celebrated Brazilian-Canadian pianist Luciane Cardassi plays. Its character is more persistent, and as the droning pitch moves with the different sections of the piece, one feels as though the previous held note is still lingering somewhere in the background.
With their extended durations, shared themes, and common instrumentation, this hypnotic pair of works casts a new light on Emilie LeBel’s sonic imagination and leaves the listener enough space to be totally ensconced in it.
-Nick Storring, Riparian Media
