in an archipelago features cutting edge chamber music from four distinctly visionary composers, performed by the Standing Wave Ensemble.

TRACKS
in an archipelago (2020) – James O’Callaghan (b. 1988)
1) I. a repeating island
2) II. ultima thule

3) Difficult Bamboo (2013) – Mason Bates (b.1970)

single Red flower (2022) – Bekah Simms (b. 1990)
4) I. a few warbles for the little dead
5) II. the big alive, feeling small

Of All Things Elusive (2023) – Dorothy Chang (b. 1970)
6) 1. sea of haze
7) 2. (mis)fire

8) metamold (2020) – Bekah Simms (b. 1990)

CREDITS
Performed by Standing Wave
Christie Reside, flutes; AK Coope, clarinets; Rebecca Whitling, violin; Cristian Márkos, cello; Allen Stiles, piano; Vern Griffiths, percussion

Produced by Will Howie and Rebecca Whitling
Recorded and Mixed by Will Howie
Mastered by Graemme Brown
Assistant Engineers: Julian Franco, James Perella
Recorded at CBC Studio One, Vancouver BC

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council.

Difficult Bamboo published by Aphra Music

in an archipelago is available from:

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PROGRAM NOTES

in an archipelago (2020) – James O’Callaghan
In an archipelago is a work for sextet and electronics, or any combination of its constituent parts, from solos, various possible duos and trios, and so on, all the way up to the full band, for a total of 127 possible combinations. The work was composed during the COVID-19 pandemic, where an uncertain future led to the idea of affording the extracting of solos from the commission of a chamber piece-to-be. Each instrument’s part was composed one-by-one, first as a mockup assembled from recordings of my past pieces, among other sources. I listened to each of these parts in different combinations and fine-tuned them as I went in order to compose in such a way that they could exist on their own or in this variable company. I then transcribed the parts into a notated chamber score. Each instrument has a phoneme attached to it, drawn from the title, and the title of each performance becomes an assemblage of its parts.

Antonio Benítez-Rojo’s 1985 essay The Repeating Island set out a way of thinking borne of the postcolonial conditions of the Caribbean that challenges the binary ontologies of Analytical and Continental Thinking. An Archipelagic Thinking is one of multiplicity and polyrhythm which conceptualizes through fragmentary interrelations rather than a system or a totality. In composing this piece, I was thinking about connectivity through isolation, and the idea that repetition brings necessarily a difference and a deferral. The kind of densely modular repetition I experiment with, where every moment is densely recontextualizable, is one that I hope offers an opportunity to collapse binary listening.

metamold (2020) – Bekah Simms
The three commissioning ensembles of “metamold” are embedded within the work; the electronic element is sourced almost exclusively from provided recordings of their musical performances. Both their sound and interpretive inclinations are inherent within these recordings, and this carries forward into the processed audio that make up the fixed media portion of the electronics. This audio also influences the acoustic component, reflecting three very different groups of performers.

The transmission and processing of audio – as it become further and further away from its intended purpose as a recorded performance – becomes diluted, accruing artefacts both sonic and contextual. The disembodied version of the players is further abstracted, granulated, separated from the whole. It was impossible to ignore the connections between this concept and the experience of global-pandemic-induced isolation; for now, the only way I’ve experienced my family and friends is abstracted, granulated, separated from the whole, disembodied and transmitted through speakers and screens.

As a result, “metamold” is at times fragmented and sectional while simultaneously being repetitive and insistent: an electronic echo that shifts quickly but maintains core elements of itself (the commissioners themselves) always at a distance through the speakers.

single Red flower (2022) – Bekah Simms
Single Red Flower was written shortly before, during, and after the death of my two rats Parsley and Sage. They were my pandemic companions, providing much love and friendship during two awful years of lockdown in a small Toronto basement apartment. The two movements are threaded with residual emotion from their passing.

Having never dealt with losing a pet before – let alone two in quick succession – I was mystified, touched, and overwhelmed with the rituals of their little deaths: laying them in the cage for their cagemates to process their death; picking out a flowerpot, soil, and seeds in which to bury them; and laying them to rest in a backyard rental which we would soon be leaving. Only one plant bloomed from the planter, a beautiful red flower of a species I have never seen before. 

While I often try to keep my emotions out of my music, this piece inadvertently became strange, small, and ritualistic, reflecting these experiences. Little, quiet sounds are brought to the forefront and amplified to fill the space in the same way that little things can fill our hearts beyond bearing.

Of All Things Elusive (2023)- Dorothy Chang
Of All Things Elusive (2023) was written as a reflection on the continuing aftereffects of a head injury from a few years ago.  Written in two movements, the piece is a musical exploration of the elusiveness of memory, language and knowledge.   The first movement “sea of haze” centers on the concept of a search for clarity, slowly sifting through various textures of entangled lines.   The second movement “(mis)fire” is meant to capture the energy of repeated efforts to jumpstart the mind into action,  with an overall frenzied and at times chaotic quality.   

DIFFICULT BAMBOO (2013) – Mason Bates
Music with a pronounced stylistic evolution fascinates me, and the search for imaginative conceits that can accommodate this dynamic stylistic approach has led to some unusual forms. Difficult Bamboo’s transformation from eerie minimalism to frenetic maximalism is based on the premise of an aggressive species of running bamboo invading a bucolic landscape.

The pentatonic-tinged harmonies that open the piece, articulated by fluttertonging and tremolo sonorities, conjure a West Coast pastoral. But this lyrical music is quickly visited by an insidiously persistent ‘bamboo replicating’ music of a pulsing, bending unison. Flickering motives and out-of-tune notes quickly infect each instrument, and the harmony quickly morphs into highly chromatic territory. Even the percussionist’s shaker rhythm jumps to the others’ music stands. At several moments, the lyrical pastoral music returns, but the ‘bamboo replicating’ music (like the plant itself) is impossible to kill.