New Songs by James Rolfe

TRACKS
1. Marigold (A. F. Moritz; 4’09”)
2. Wound Turned To Light (Andrea Thompson; 3’30”)
3. Burning in This Midnight Dream (Louise B. Halfe; 3’18”)
4. For E. J. P. (Leonard Cohen; 4’29”)
5. Moon (Choucri Paul Zemokhol; 3’33”)
6. Bombastic (George Elliott Clarke; 2’25”)
7. After the Love at Victoria Street (Boyd Warren Chubbs; 3’11”)
8. v (Amatoritsero Ede; 2’30”)
9. Set me as a seal (from Song of Solomon; 2’00”)
10. and then a second dream (Luciano Iacobelli; 3’35”)
11. Namesake (Giovanna Riccio; 4’07”)
12. To the Poet (George Elliott Clarke; 1’36”)
13. The way spring jabs (Ayesha Chatterjee; 2’21’’)
14. Phoenix IV (Bänoo Zan; 2’44”)
15. Last Paddle (Richard Sanger; 6’20”)
16. Songs of Joy (from Psalm 126; 2’32’’)
17. Prelude (Astrid Brunner; 3’18”)
18. Minuet 1 (Astrid Brunner; 2’04”)
19. Spirit Tree (Anna Yin; 2’49”)

CREDITS
Musicians:
Alex Samaras, voice (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19);
Jeremy Dutcher, voice (3, 9, 16);
Andrew Adridge, voice (6, 13);
Lara Dodds-Eden, piano

Recording details:
Producer: Steven Philcox
Associate Producer: James Rolfe
Engineer: Julian Decorte
Mixed, edited, and mastered by Jean Martin, Barnyard Records
Recorded August 19, 20, 21, 2022 at The Canterbury Music Co., Toronto
Cover art: Sophie Herxheimer
Design: Joseph Bradley Hill

Wound Turned to Light is available from:

Ah, Auditing the Sins of Commission!
By George Elliott Clarke
These liner notes result from my response to the opening salvo of the COVID Pandemic, which dominated 2020 and decimated nations.  Being a tenured prof, I hoped to aid outta-commission artists by bankrolling weaving, painting, calligraphy, bookbinding, and—yes—the composing of songs to Canuck-authored poems.  So, on Christmas Day, 2020, my companion Giovanna Riccio was surprised—joyously—to hear her poem, “Namesake,” sung to her by my cousin Sheila White, thanks to James Rolfe’s secretly composed score.  Witnessing everyone’s pleasure in the gift, I commissioned many more pieces from James; and then he won grants to record this CD.  How fine now to pony up my additional “2¢” by remarking on these compositions….

“Marigold” flows out of A. F. Moritz’s floral-imagery-studded florilegium, The Garden (2021).  Pondering the L.A. riots of 1992 and other reactions to anti-Black violence, the American-born Moritz beatifies cop-slain, ghetto saints.  In response, Rolfe drafts a passional featuring opening notes heralding rain-kissed petals; next, Mother Mary—evoked in her namesake flower and notions of martyrdom—receives a song chiming a blues aria.

“Wound Turned to Light” is titled after a phrase by artiste Georges Braque (1882-1963), whose cubist expressionism inspires the sermon-poem by Andrea Thompson, an Afro-Scot-Canadian who values “the colours of this jagged emotional palette”:  Each soul.  Rolfe’s music champions Thompson’s adoration of Beauty, then punctuates the frenetic discord sparked by ideologies, before resolving to shout “Yes” to life (pace Joyce’s Molly Bloom).  

“Burning in This Midnight Dream” presents an Indigenous Elder who voices how the Christian crucifix has become a field of X’s for Indigenous People, hexing lives and nixing cultures—as well as a signature prescribing medicine or underwriting schoolhouse sado-masochism.  Rolfe sets the poem of Louise Bernice Halfe, a.k.a. Sky Dancer, amid dirge-like piano, while the voice becomes a howl edging toward a shriek.

“Moon” registers the Sufi-tinged, Beat(ific) Zen of Choucri Paul Zemokhol, a Québec-raised poet of Syrian-Lebanese-Egyptian descent.  Does his poem marry Rumi and Rimbaud?  Plangent, poignant, the piano ushers the voice unto meditative yearning, to conjure amity and comity.  A torch song to be crooned between sips of tea….

“For E. J. P.” is Leonard Cohen’s ironic elegy for Edwin John Pratt (1882-1964), English Canada’s renowned, “Establishment” poet of the mid-20^th-century.  By staging Pratt as a Chinese mandarin, the iconic Jewish-Québécois singer-songwriter, Cohen (1934-2016), spoofs Pratt’s omission of Chinese labourers from his epic, Towards the Last Spike (1952), celebrating the building of Canada’s national railway.  Rolfe’s music?  Rain-delicate, zephyr-wistful. 

“Bombastic” is my retort to paleface critics who deem me a Black Canuck bard who’s all mouth and no mind.  Rolfe’s stabbing piano apes the hectic, soundtrack strings of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)?  “My” voice?  An alienated, Fanonian, Black intellectual, eh?

“After the Love at Victoria Street” allegorizes romantic love as akin to a tidal back-and-forth pleating beach and brine, tempest and trees, etc.  A Labrador poet, now resident in E.J.P.’s own Newfoundland, Boyd Warren Chubbs conjoins visionary William Blake and sensual Dylan Thomas.  Naturally, then, Rolfe’s keyboard surges waves of notes sounding like Atlantic spray striking boulders.

“v” protests despotism and oil-and-gas pollution in Amatoritsero Ede’s Nigerian homeland.  Once a refugee adrift in Germany, Ede reflects on how Weser-River-witnessed Nazi horrors are now staining the Niger River Delta, thanks to “Hitlerite” Abacha.  Rolfe’s piano detonates notes like burp-gun play, even quoting “Three Blind Mice,” underscoring how tyrants play blithely with human lives.

“Set me as a seal” is a Rolfe-chosen poem, lifted from the biblical, Hebrew canticle, the Song of Songs (8: 6-7).  The joint voices of Rolfe’s setting assure us love is “strong as death,” is also unkillable, and incorruptible:  This faith carries newlyweds—intertwined, inseparable—from altar to two graves.

“and then a second dream” recounts the Dali-esque nightmare of Luciano Iacobelli (1956-2022), one connecting “a decomposing whale” to the poet’s depletions of his substance due to a gambling addiction, analyzed in his collection, Dolor Midnight (2018).  Melancholic plunk Rolfe’s angst-ridden notes; quavering—almost oozing—is the voice.  Italianate Iacobelli penned unconsciously his own consummate elegy, while Rolfe’s score elaborates its heartbreaking, threnodic perfection.

“Namesake”:  Rolfe casts Giovanna Riccio’s lyric as a mini-opera about an awakening: i.e., a young woman rediscovering her Italian heritage and reclaiming her birth-name, jettisoning the Anglo-Toronto, schoolmarm dubbing, “Joan.”  The rollicking keyboard navigates girlhood labyrinths of alienation, but then maps the émigré’s consciousness-raising tour of Roma, where she feels—at last—at home, after hearing “Gio-van-na” sung as a transporting aria.

“To the Poet” belongs to the Romantic Afro-Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837).  Knowing that Pushkin died by gunshot, I disdain Constance Garnett’s dull englishing of the poem!  Thus, I rewrote her 1937-published translation, to cast Pushkin as a “boom-bastic” Africadian bard, eh?  Don’t Rolfe’s piano fuse Ragtime and Rap riffs?  Don’t that voice shimmy and stomp?

“The way spring jabs” illustrates how spring repulses recoiling winter.  Indo-Canadian poet Ayesha Chatterjee eyes how first shoots bayonet through failing snow, signalling that warmth will prevail.  Citizens exit and enter homes in tempo with temperatures, while death continues as spiders “set their endless traps.”  Rolfe’s notes bebop about in a finger-popping, head-bopping melody that echoes ricocheting shots….

“Phoenix (IV)” delivers an allegorical denunciation of Iranian tyranny that can push victims toward suicide or to homicide, while life and liberty are only sustained via psychological—or actual—exile….  Persian-Canadian poet Bänoo Zan (a pseudonym meaning “Ms. Woman”) inks a metaphysics of feminism, which Rolfe affirms, his notes scheming and plotting to coddle dissent—with “celestial song” as “alluring as pain.”

“Last Paddle” recalls a signal poem by E. Pauline Johnson or Tekahionwake (1861-1913), “The Song My Paddle Sings” (1917), but also salutes the “Cottage Country” ethos of many citified Canucks.  Here, Richard Sanger (1960-2022) drafts lines aching with mourning, not just for summer’s demise, but for the cleavage from others that mortality exacts.  Rolfe’s notes?  His tear-seasoned eulogy for his beloved friend.

“Songs of Joy” descends from Psalm 126.  Rolfe’s second offering from Hebrew scripture is again double-voiced—as is “Set me as a seal.”  While the former solidifies the transcendent nature of committed love, we hear now how “shouts of joy” accompany entrée unto Zion.  The song ferries us from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 to Revelation 21:4.

“Prelude” and “Minuet I” are poems by Swiss-German-Canadian Astrid Brunner, both of which appear in her “Mary Magdalene: A Suite in B Minor” from her collection Raw Silk (1996, 1998).  “Prelude” tells of a secular “Mary” seeking friendship with a suitor whose colour code is red, suggesting the Adversary, not the Divine.  But “Minuet I” sees a red-haired, au naturel “Mary”—in imagination—promise her epistolary suitor a bawdy reunion amid “white howling wind.”  Rolfe accompanies “Prelude” with notes roll-calling ruddy devil (or scarlet-lady) imagery; but “Minuet 1” gifts us with galloping notes echoing an ink nib racing across paper—or a Lady Godiva impatient to ride to her lover, even amid a blizzard!

“Spirit Tree” unfurls Chinese-Canadian poet Anna Yin’s elegy for her inspiration and mentor Priscilla Uppal (1974-2018).  Yin’s poem seeks to plant for Uppal a “spirit tree”—“a healing from heaven”; but she also wonders about her own, a lightning-split willow that sprouts “new branches.” Able to press the willow leaves into Uppal’s books, they seem to cling together and whisper a “forest of stories.”  Rolfe’s piano unleashes notes like wind-tossed, autumn leaves.

TK540 © 2023 James Rolfe

---

Artist biographies

The composer
Toronto composer James Rolfe has been commissioned and performed by ensembles, orchestras, choirs, theatres, and opera companies in Canada, the USA, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the K. M. Hunter Music Award, the Louis Applebaum Composers Award, the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music, a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, Choral Canada’s Outstanding Choral Work Award, and the Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize.

Rolfe’s operas have been performed in Toronto, Halifax, Vancouver, Banff, Edmonton, and New York. Beatrice Chancy, his first opera, played to sold-out houses and rave reviews; his most recent opera, The Overcoat, was premiered by Tapestry Opera with Canadian Stage and Vancouver Opera, and was nominated for 10 Dora Awards. Two solo CDs (raW, 2011, and Breathe, 2018, nominated for a JUNO Award) are available on Centrediscs. Rolfe is a composition instructor at the University of Toronto, and frequently serves as a composer mentor.

The poets
Astrid Brunner, born an orphan into the chaos of WWII at Schloß Srühlingen, has been a traveller ever since. Phoenixed at age two from the discarded ashes of her earliest life, writing soon became the missing home and family. In both English and German, it took many forms: arts and theatre journalism, translating, performance (Life Classes) and academic texts (doctoral thesis on British playwright Tom Stoppard), book publishing (ABcollectorpublishing), photography (George Steeves’ ‘Exile’ CMCP), biographical anthology, short stories, aphorisms, poetry: critical favourites are RawSilk RohSeide SoieEcrue, Glass, On the Night the Flowers Caught Fire, My Aschi! My Pericles!, Mimosen, and the video ‘Marlene in Academe’ – scripted produced directed performed (Banff Centre/MacLean Hunter). Brunner is now a passable fool of time living in Halifax NS with her gorgeous cat Fledermaus.

Born and raised in India, Ayesha Chatterjee has lived in five countries on three continents. She is the author of two poetry collections, The Clarity of Distance, and Bottles and Bones. Her work has appeared in journals around the world and been translated into several languages. Chatterjee is a past president of the League of Canadian Poets. She lives in Toronto.

Boyd Warren Chubbs was born in L’Anse Au Clair, Labrador. His poetry and music have been featured on both regional and national CBC Radio and Television. He has received numerous private and public commissions for drawings and illuminations. His visual art has been featured at numerous solo and group exhibitions at the Christina Parker Gallery in St. John’s, where Boyd makes his home. All work continues and all are one.

The 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17), George Elliott Clarke hails from Windsor, Nova Scotia, as of 1960. A scholar of African-Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto, Clarke has also taught at Duke, McGill, UBC, and Harvard. His recognitions include the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre Fellowship (US), the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry, the Premiul Poesis (Romania), the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US), and International Fellow Poet of the Year, Encyclopedic Poetry School [2019] (China). His acclaimed titles include Whylah Falls (1990, translated into Chinese), Beatrice Chancy (1999, translated into Italian), Execution Poems (2001), Blues and Bliss (selected poems, 2009), I & I (2008), Illicit Sonnets (U.K., 2013), Traverse (2015), Canticles II (MMXX) (2020), and J’Accuse…! (Poem versus Silence) (2021). Clarke penned the libretto for James Rolfe’s triumphant, tragic opera, Beatrice Chancy (1998).

Leonard Cohen (1934 – 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. His work explored faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, social and political conflict, and sexual and romantic love, desire, regret, and loss. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada. Cohen pursued a career as a poet and novelist beginning in the 1950s. He began performing his songs in 1967, after which he released numerous albums throughout his career, touring the globe to wide acclaim. Says George Elliott Clarke, “Leonard Cohen was the Canadian poet who debuted Canadian poetry that is pure-and-simple, nonchalantly great.”

Amatoritsero Ede has published a collection of nonfiction essays, Imagination’s Many Rooms (2022), as well as three poetry collections, A Writer’s Pains & Caribbean Blues (1998), Globetrotter & Hitler’s Children (2009) and Teardrops on the Weser (2021). His debut won the All-Africa Okigbo Prize (1998), and the second was nominated for the Nigerian Literature Prize (2013). In 2004, he won second prize in the first (German) May Ayim award. He appears in 15 anthologies globally. Ede is also a scholar and Assistant Professor of English at Mount Allison University, and publishes the Maple Tree Literary Supplement.

Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer was raised on Saddle Lake Reserve and attended Blue Quills Residential School. Louise is married, and has two adult children and three grandsons. She graduated with a Bachelor of Social Work from the University of Regina. She completed two years of Addictions Counselor Training at St. Albert’s Nechi Institute where she also facilitated the program. She served as Canada’s 9^th Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2021-2023), as Saskatchewan’s Poet Laureate (2005-2006), and has traveled extensively for her poetics and to present at numerous conferences. Her books include Bear Bones and Feathers, Blue Marrow, The Crooked Good, Burning In This Midnight Dream, Sohkeyihta, and awasis-kinky and dishevelled. She has received numerous accolades and awards including honorary doctorates from Wilfred Laurier University, the University of Saskatchewan, and Mount Royal University. She currently serves as the national Parliamentary Library Poet Laureate. Louise also serves as an elder or knowledge keeper at the University of Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Health Authority, Virtual Hospice, Opik, and others. She actively participates in cultural and ceremonial activities relevant to her Plains Cree culture. 

Luciano Iacobelli (d. 2022) was a Toronto poet, playwright, visual artist, creative writing teacher, event organizer, publisher and editor. He was the author of six books of poetry and numerous chapbooks. He was the owner and supervising editor of Quattro Books, a literary press specializing in novellas and poetry, and the founder of Q Space, a retail and salon space in Toronto’s Little Italy. Iacobelli’s books have been published by Guernica Press, Mantis Editores, Quattro, and various fine presses; his work has been translated into Spanish and Italian. Iacobelli operated a micropress called LyricalMyrical press, known for producing handcrafted poetry chapbooks featuring dozens of poets, writers, and artists, which can be found in special collections across North America.

A. F. Moritz is a poet, teacher, and scholar who teaches at the University of Toronto. His most recent books of poems are The Garden (2021), As Far As You Know (2020), and The Sparrow: Selected Poems (2018). His work has received the Griffin Poetry Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Ingram Merrill Fellowship, Beth Hokin Prize of Poetry magazine, ReLit Award., selection to the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, and other recognitions. Three of his books have been finalists for the Governor General’s Award. 

Giovanna Riccio is a poet, teacher and independent scholar. She graduated from the University of Toronto where she majored in philosophy. She is the author of Vittorio (LyricalMyrical Press, 2010), Strong Bread (Quattro Books, 2011), and Plastic’s Republic (Guernica Editions, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2022 Bressani Literary Prize. In 2021, she won the Venera Fazio Poetry Prize.

Richard Sanger (1960 – 2022) grew up in Ottawa and lived in Toronto. He published three poetry collections and a chapbook; Dark Woods was named one of the top ten poetry books by the New York Times. His plays include Not Spain, Two Words for Snow, Hannah’s Turn, and Dive, as well as translations of Calderon, Lorca, and Lope de Vega. He also published essays, reviews, and poetry translations. He was nominated for a Governor-General’s Literary Award and multiple Dora Awards.

Andrea Thompson is a writer, editor, educator and award-winning spoken word artist who has been publishing and performing her work for over twenty-five years. She is the recipient of the 2021 Pavlick Poetry Prize, and her collection, A Selected History of Soul Speak, was nominated for the Pat Lowther, Raymond Souster and Robert Kroetsch awards. Andrea currently teaches spoken word through the University of Toronto. Her most recent work is The Good Word, a spoken word album that explores the intersection of Black history and faith.

Anna Yin was Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate (2015-17) and has authored five poetry collections and one collection of translations: Mirrors and Windows (Guernica Editions 2021). Anna won the 2005 Ted Plantos Memorial Award, two MARTYs, two scholarships from USA and grants from Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. Her poems and translations have appeared in Queen’s Quarterly, ARC Poetry, New York Times, China Daily, CBC Radio, Literary Review of Canada etc. She has read on Parliament Hill, at Austin International Poetry Festival, Edmonton Poetry Festival and universities in China, Canada, the USA, and elsewhere. She has designed and taught Poetry Alive since 2011.

Bänoo Zan is a poet, librettist, translator, teacher, editor and poetry curator, with more than 250 published poems and poetry-related pieces as well as three books including Songs of Exile and Letters to My Father. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Canada’s most diverse poetry reading and open mic series (inception: 2012), a brave space that bridges the gap between communities of poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), ages, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, poetic styles, voices, and visions. Bänoo was the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Alberta, Canada, Sept 2022-May 2023. 

Choucri Paul Zemokhol is an Egypt-born poet who teaches in Toronto’s alternative school system. He has arranged vowels and consonants to compose the chapbooks Apocrypha; No hope, No help, No tea; and a full length book, A River at Night. He has also delivered two poems that were brooded into song by James Rolfe and D. D. Jackson. 

The performers
Alex Samaras is a singing artist. His output as a performer and recording artist span every genre and style. Alex leads his own band, Tryal, and has released two records since 2017. His vocal group Grex, founded by Alex in 2010 explores the extremes of the human voice and the body/voice connection. Alex sings with the Queer Songbook Orchestra and is a singer and piano player on tour with Beverley Glenn Copeland. The Guardian noted “La Vita is a highlight tonight, sounding like a wayward trance classic, the stunning baritone of Alex Samaras pushing its propulsiveness to higher planes.”

Alex is an active member in the Toronto theatre and dance community. He has premiered new operas and created roles in new musicals including The Cave by Tomson Highway and John Millard and performed Claude Vivier’s Musik für das Ende and Love Songs in Berlin and London with Soundstreams. He has worked as a composer and vocal collaborator with choreographers including Susie Burpee, Meredith Thompson and with Ame Henderson and Christopher House at the Toronto Dance Theatre. Alex also has an ongoing Art Song collaboration with pianist Lara Dodds-Eden that includes the music of Schubert and Sondheim.

Alex loves collaborating with people of all ages. He has taught at the University of Toronto Jazz and Classical Department, Humber College, Jazz Works Music Camp and National Music Camp, where he directed a chorus of 250 students. He is also the founder of the PAL Chorale, a community choir for seniors at the Performing Artists Lodge in Toronto.

Jeremy Dutcher
Jeremy Dutcher is a Two-Spirit song carrier, composer, activist, ethnomusicologist and classically-trained vocalist from New Brunswick, Canada who currently lives in Montréal, Québec. A Wolastoqiyik member of Neqotkuk (Tobique First Nation) in North-West New Brunswick, Jeremy is best known for his debut album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa (The Songs of the People of the Beautiful River), recorded following a research project on archival recordings of traditional Wolastoqiyik songs at the Canadian Museum of History. Jeremy transcribed songs sung by his ancestors in 1907 and recorded onto wax cylinders, transforming them into “collaborative” compositions. The album earned him the 2018 Polaris Music Prize and Indigenous Music Album of the Year at the 2019 JUNO Awards. His 2019 NPR Tiny Desk Concert has over 85,000 views.

Jeremy studied music and anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After training as an operatic tenor in the Western classical tradition, he expanded his professional repertoire to include the traditional singing style and songs of his community. Jeremy’s music transcends boundaries: unapologetically playful in its incorporation of classical influences, full of reverence for the traditional songs of his home, and teeming with the urgency of modern-day resistance.

Jeremy has toured the world, from Australia and Norway to Italy and the Philippines. He has worked with and performed for iconic artists such as Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joni Mitchell, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Jeremy is regularly sought out for his perspectives on queerness, Indigeneity, language revitalization, and fashion, including a 2022 appearance as a guest judge on Canada’s Drag Race. In 2022, Jeremy and his family launched Kekhimin, the first ever Wolastoqey language immersion school, in Fredericton New Brunswick.

Andrew Adridge (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist and arts administrator based in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto holding both a Bachelor of Music Performance in Voice and a Master of Music in Opera. He has been featured as an ensemble soloist both at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto and the Kennedy Centre in Washington, D.C. Andrew has participated in several young artist programs including The Chautauqua Institution Voice Program, and the Banff Opera program. Andrew has worked as a performer and a director with such companies as Soundstreams, Edmonton Opera, Against the Grain Theatre, and The Canadian Opera Company. Andrew has found success in contributing his artistry to projects both as a singer and a spoken word artist working recently with Juliet Palmer on riverMOUTH in a hybrid capacity. Andrew has a deep desire to develop and participate in socially relevant artistic projects as frequently as possible, and is fortunate to work with so many creators and artists who are agents of social change. In his daily life, Andrew is the Executive Director of the Toronto Consort.

Australian pianist Lara Dodds-Eden‘s musical career has spanned three continents and encompassed hundreds of collaborations. She recently returned to live in London, UK, where she formerly studied Piano Accompaniment at the Guildhall School of Music and performed frequently at venues including the Wigmore Hall, the South Bank’s Royal Festival Hall and Purcell Room, and the Barbican Hall. An invitation from the Banff Centre precipitated a move to North America, where Lara pursued doctoral studies focused on singing artsong in translation with Lydia Wong following a twenty week residency in Banff as Collaborative Pianist and Associate Artist in 2013-2014. Performances with artists as diverse as Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and cellist Raphael Wallfisch were highlights of this period, as well as a tour of the Danube with soprano Danika Lorèn and tours of Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and Newfoundland with the Toronto Children’s Chorus. She counts the opportunity to play with Alex Samaras during the years in Toronto as one of that time’s greatest gifts. These songs by James Rolfe and his constellation of poets have been an affirmation of that feeling.

A note from the composer
My thanks to The Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council for funding this CD; to producer Steven Philcox for his enthusiasm, eagle ears, and impeccable musicianship; to engineers Julian Decorte and Jean Martin for making this recording sound great; to all the musicians—Lara, Alex, Jeremy, Andrew—for giving so generously of their skill, musicality, and soul; to George Elliott Clarke, who commissioned most of these works, and whose faith, vision, and persistence helped to create this silver lining to the pandemic; to composer Juliet Palmer, who patiently played piano while I sang through multiple drafts of these songs, and whose musical input helped shape them; to visual artist and poet Sophie Herxheimer for her vibrant paintings, inkings, and cuttings, and to designer Joseph Bradley Hill for his clear and articulate layout; to all the poets, my visionary and talented collaborators and colleagues; to you, my listener, and to all my listeners over the years: I am humbled and blessed to be in your company.
With warmth and appreciation,
James Rolfe