Album Notes

“…A glorious voice, a riveting stage presence.”
Stuart Hamilton, CBC’s Opera Quiz

"Words and music bursting forth!" Alan Neal - CBC, Canada Live

Award winning musicians Doreen Taylor-Claxton and Valerie Dueck are, “Better than ever in this important contribution to Canadian art song.” Jill LaForty - CBC

“[Taylor-Claxton’s] voice is clear, beautiful and deserving of more recognition. Dueck is a wonderful performer, and more than supportive to the singer.” - Jean Paul Sevilla

Review: Richard Todd, Ottawa Citizen Sept 30, 2006
4 Stars: Excellent
This CD is part of a project to assist Canadian composers in finding Canadian texts to use in composing art songs. This can be difficult, since many poets consider their work too complete to bear musical settings.
Soprano Doreen Taylor-Claxton approached poets who provided samples of their work to Ottawa composers. The results of this worthwhile project are variable but more than a little interesting.
Hail is a cycle by John G. Armstrong of 14 monometer poems by Seymour Mayne. They are short, epigrammatic and individually effective. “Light,” for example, is utterly exquisite … Settings by James Wright and Colin Mack of poems by Steven Michael Berzensky and Sharon Singer are more harmonically conservative, but effective. Mack’s “Destiny” is especially affecting. Frédéric Lacroix’s four-song cycle A Nova Scotia Tartan is the most beautiful offering here, not least because of Effie MacIsaac Taylor’s wonderful verse.
Soprano Taylor-Claxton and pianist Valerie Dueck put together convincing accounts of the music. Definitely recommended. Richard Todd, Ottawa Citizen, September 30, 2006

History:
In Need of Song Collaborations assists composers in finding Canadian texts and encourages collaborations between poets and composers. In Need of Song began in February of 2003, when a number of established Canadian poets provided samples of their poems for consideration by composers in the Ottawa area.
One of the first collaborations to develop was between John Armstrong and Seymour Mayne. Mayne is recognized for pioneering the “word sonnet” - a variation of the sonnet in which the fourteen lines have been pared down to one word per line. His publication Hail is a series of fifteen word sonnets that roughly follow the months of the year. Armstrong set 14 of these streamlined, graceful texts which appealed to his interest in musical miniatures. Asked why he so favored the miniature, he would only say, “I just like beautiful moments!” The result of this collaboration is an elegant and appealingly dramatic series of “moments.” Richard Todd, Ottawa Citizen, described “Light," "Equinox" and "Dust” as “utterly exquisite.”
James Wright has pursued a broad-ranging career as a composer, performer, choral director, teacher and musicologist. The evocative imagery and sonorous qualities of Steven Michael Berzensky’s moving tribute to music spoke to him of his own quest and inspired his jazz-infused setting of “Quilled Sonnet.”
In 2004 Colin Mack and Sharon Singer collaborated on The Names of Water. The cycle is based on three poems, “Mist,” “Becalmed” and “Destiny” which use imagery of water in various forms. Mack felt “an immediate resonance” with Singer’s work. His fluid and melodic writing is described by Stuart Hamilton as “a beautiful response to the poetry.” His imaginative use of harmony provides a wide range of expressive colour while still being supportive of the singer. In turns meditative, vulnerable, despairing and hopeful The Names of Water is a vocally gratifying cycle.
Frédéric Lacroix was drawn to the lyricism of Effie MacIsaac Taylor’s poetry as well as the opportunities for musical coloration provided by her choice of words. Nova Scotia Tartan (2004) uses strains of Allistair MacGillivary’s ‘Song for the Mira’ to unify the cycle. The cycle reveals the composer’s efforts to find a medium between the dissonant language of the more ‘intellectual’ composers of the twentieth-century and the romantic harmonic discourse that communicates more effectively to the public.
The greater part of Donald Cook’s career was spent in his native Newfoundland. Time and again, he has drawn on the Island’s folk music and tradition as both the source and the inspiration for his compositions. His contribution to music in Canada has been recognized provincially and nationally. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. Four of the songs in this suite were composed in 1989 for the Atlantic Arts Trio. A fifth song, “The maid on the shore,” was added in 2001. The songs are freely adapted and arranged in a manner that is original, and adds a musical sophistication that goes beyond the folk song. The first, middle, and final songs reflect the humour and wit for which Newfoundland is so well known. Cook contributes his own musical wit; the insertion in “Lukey’s Boat" of a few bars of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” and the plainchant Nunc dimittis, and also the clarinet glissando in “Jack was every inch a sailor”. In contrast, the remaining two songs show a serious and sensitive side of Newfoundland’s past.

HAIL (CanSona Arts Media, 2006) recorded by soprano Doreen Taylor-Claxton, and pianist Valerie Dueck, available here at CD Baby!