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Album Review
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New Classics, Album Review >>
Based in Vancouver, the Juno-nominated Orchid Ensemble is a Canadian/Taiwanese group that blends western classical and jazz with traditional Chinese music. Their compositions are driven by poetry, drawing on Hebrew, Spanish, British and Chinese texts, drawing on poets from China’s 8th-century wordsmith Li Bai to the Romantic Dante Rossetti. Orchid Ensemble’s new album, Life Death Tears Dream, shows how words and music can combine to create a new, uncanny world. They can tie down the meaning of a musical piece - or inspire and liberate its performers. The poetry and words that underpin this recording conjure otherworldly landscapes, wandering spirits and ethereal loves, while integrating traditions rarely considered compatible. In this new world, erhu (a two-stringed fiddle) echoes a flamenco lament (‘Ay la llamo’). Stark electronics and earthy marimba (‘Ghostly Moon’), full choir and zheng (zither with moveable bridges, ‘Life Death Tears Dream’) unite the spiritual and sensual, the terrifying and wonderful. By turns thrilling and meditative, this exotic music is a tribute to Canada’s thriving multi-culturalism. ‘Many of the pieces we wanted to include on the album included or were inspired by poetry, but stylistically were wildly diverse,’ explains Orchid’s marimba player Jonathan Bernard. ‘As the process evolved, we felt liberated from a musically-defined theme and found cohesion through the world of poetics, which we feel allows for realms beyond rational or logic, beyond earthly constraints.’ 05/06/13 >> go there
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