Recording: Continuum Contemporary Music

Artist: Continuum Contemporary Music

Song: Red Ensign [excerpt]

Recorded at The Music Gallery ("30 More!"), March 8, 2015.

Continuum Contemporary Music - Red Ensign [excerpt]

Congratulations are due to local new music ensemble Continuum, celebrating their 30th anniversary at this concert. Befitting their mandate, it was a forward-looking affair, mixing pieces from Richard Ayres and Joe Cutler with young Turkish composer Mithatcan Öcal. But best of all, its centrepiece was works from Jason Doell and Anna Höstman, two celebrated "emerging" local composers.

From Höstman there was a re-working of her Lattice for violin and piano — a piece that was commissioned by Thin Edge Music Collective making a return to the stage in reworked form. Doell's piece was a première commissioned by Continuum, featuring delicate textures rubbing up against each other in slow bursts separated by pregnant pauses. It's a noteworthy accomplishment even if the composer has tried to distract from the work with his subversively pseudo-grandiose program notes — "these sounds aren't echoes and they certainly do not wave in the wind, not in one manner nor another." (It's also recommended to anyone who liked, say, Daniel Brandes' "Intimations of Melody" off the Bespoken tape. In fact, you can play both at once to quite pleasant effect.)

[N.B.: you can hear a much nicer recording of the piece over at Doell's soundcloud.]