 "Canticle" with Clarion Fracture Zone and Martenitsa Choir
Martenitsa's collaboration with Clarion Fracture Zone, the stunning jazz suite "Canticle", written by Sandy Evans, Tony Gorman and Alistair Spence was first performed in June 1997, and again in 2001 at Paddington Uniting Church.
Set to text from the Biblical "Song of Songs", the music includes text translations into Bulgarian and Scottish Gaelic, as well as chants and vocal effects and improvisations from CFZ which includes Lloyd Swanton on bass, Toby Hall on drums and Paul Cutlan on sax and bass clarinet.
Canticle was commissioned by the Eastside parish of the Uniting Church of Australia and was recorded at Sony studios in March 2001. It is now available on Rufus Records RF 060 through Universal music. You can order it through Mara Music - see home page (cover pictured above).
"Passion soaring all the way to Heaven" (by John Shand), March 19 2001:
Canticle... (is) a celebration of love and sexuality, using the yearning eroticism of the Bible's Song of Songs as a launch pad. Implicit was the idea that Christianity's emphasis on love was never supposed to exclude passion..... the work erupts with the quality and this performance eclipsed that of four years ago. The players have all grown, and the ensemble had grown becoming a sextet with the addition of the impressive talents of Paul Cutlan. The (Martenitsa) choir, especially, has matured under the ongoing direction of Mara and Llew Kiek. Shrugging tentativeness aside, the women hurled themselves into their interactions with the blazing sextet, or created eerie backdrops for gentler improvisations.
Related Artists
|