Souvenance is the title of an upcoming album by pianist Jennifer King. The discharge of works for solo piano, together with piano nocturnes, romances with out phrases, and meditations, is a set that begins within the Romantic period, stretches into the twentieth century, and even to at the moment.
The composers represented on the discharge are all girls, together with King herself in an association of Joni Mitchell’s iconic tune Blue. The album is supposed to convey a private and introspective expertise of the music and its various moods of hope, heartbreak, energy and vulnerability.
Souvenance might be launched on April 25 on Wharf Information, with one single — Cécile Chaminade’s, Nocturne in B main, Op. 165 — obtainable already right here.
Jennifer King, Piano
Jennifer King is a performer, collaborator, adjudicator, coach and recording artist. She additionally hosts the Cecilia Concert events Sensory Accessible Collection in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is equally at residence performing as a soloist as she is as a chamber musician.
The Canadian-British musician earned a Bachelor of Music from Acadia College, a Grasp of Music in solo piano efficiency from McGill College, after which went on to obtain postgraduate diplomas from the College of Studying (UK) and the Royal Academy of Music in London, UK.
Jennifer is a well-known face on the live performance circuit within the Maritimes and throughout Canada. She has commissioned a number of authentic works from Canadian composers, and has additionally has co-written a musical play about girls gaining the best to vote with mezzo-soprano Suzanne Campbell.
As a recording artist, her catalogue has been characterised by considerate curation of the works concerned. Her debut recording, O Mistress Moon (2018), spans 200 years of nocturnes and different music impressed by the evening by composers Chopin, Britten, Satie, Debussy, Barber, Poulenc, Schumann, Scriabin, Respighi, and JUNO award profitable Derek Charke. She adopted up in 2022 with O Mistress Moon: Canadian Version, that includes all-Canadian composers, which gained the ECMA for Classical Album of the 12 months for 2023.
Different albums embody (amongst others), Doolittle: Minute Études “Excerpts” (Stay), together with excerpts from a sequence of piano items by composer Emily Doolittle, and Twilight Hour (2020), which encompasses a assortment of 12 brief works impressed by fairy tales.
Jennifer King: The Interview
Cautious curation and choice could be very a lot a part of the recording course of for King.
“I believe that’s one thing that’s at all times me — how music could be juxtaposed, and the way it may cause a unique reflection of that piece,” King says.
She recollects being an avid reader in highschool. At one level, she learn an enormous anthology of poetry, and seeing the works collectively, and observing how her notion of the person poems was influenced by what she’d learn beforehand, left an impression.
It’s a method of working with a typical repertoire that features a whole lot of years price of fabric, and actually hundreds of items.
“For those who’re at all times taking part in anyone else’s interpretations, it’s a method to go away your mark,” she notes. “It’s at all times been a lifelong curiosity.”
She counts herself fortunate to have the chance to curate her personal applications nowadays, together with these for the Cecilia Concert events Sensory Accessible Collection. “That’s a extremely robust drive in what I do.”
It’s a distinction to the method of many artists, who will select to give attention to a single composer for a whole album.
“I don’t know if I can do this!” she laughs. Jennifer notes that she reads three books directly, for instance. “I wish to see how these items relate to one another.” Selecting items that transfer from one period to a different, and revolve round a theme, can serve to disclose connections between the music and totally different durations of historical past.
As she factors out, she started recording after she’d already established herself in a profession, working at a college and performing as a collaborative pianist. “I didn’t begin recording till I used to be in my late 40s,” she says.
Whereas she was at Oxford, nevertheless, the seeds have been planted by explorations in a beautiful music retailer, the place she was launched to many items of music.
“I simply began accumulating nocturnes.” That’s the place O Mistress Moon got here from. It felt like time for her to do one thing on her personal, and her assortment of nocturnes was calling. When she launched the redux, O Mistress Moon – Canadian Version, she says she “reluctantly” submitted it for an ECMA (East Coast Music Award).
Twilight Hour, with its fairy story theme, arose from music she’d collected for performances that concerned stay portray and dance.
“I had this lovely little assortment of fairy story items.”
Together with music she’d collected, her albums have included authentic commissioned works.
“I believe the composers themselves like having this theme,” she notes. “That has helped in my curation. It turns into very private, this curation.”
Souvenance
Souvenance took place partly due to happenstance. Jennifer occurred to have a while for a challenge throughout the summer season of 2024.
“Now we have a extremely good piano seller right here in Halifax,” she notes. It led to the acquisition of a beautiful grand.
“Why am I going to lease a corridor, and pay for a piano that I don’t actually know what it’s going to sound like?”
Along with multi JUNO Award profitable producer/recording engineer John DS Adams, she set to work. Adams gave the thumb’s as much as her thought of recording from her front room. The one sticking level was ambient noise.
“I went round to 18 neighbours,” she recollects. She requested if they may probably not mow their lawns or do noisy yard work between sure particular hours of the day. As she stories, they have been thrilled to conform.
“It was type of a very good neighborhood constructing train,” she laughs.
The items on the album embody music, a lot of it seldom heard or recorded, by French composers Mel Bonis (1858 to 1937), and Cécile Chaminade (1857 to 1944), Russian-born Canadian composer Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté (1899 to 1974), and American Dana Suesse (1911 to 1987), together with Clara Wieck-Schumann’s Notturno in F Main, Op. 6 No. 2, and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel’s Notturno in G Minor, H-U 337, and King’s personal association of Joni Mitchell’s Blue.
Discovering and accumulating the repertoire is an ongoing course of. Jennifer had been launched to Cécile Chaminade throughout her undergrad days, for instance. A few of her work as a collaborative pianist led to additional discoveries.
When it got here to lesser recognized items like Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté’s Caprice II Nocturne “Gute Ruh”, E.96, somewhat extra digging was required. King says she discovered one single recording of the work to make use of as a reference. It meant analysis to find out the composer’s authentic intentions.
“I actually really feel prefer it’s a brand new providing. I’m actually happy with my interpretation of it.”
For her personal compositional enter for the album, she was searching for music, and an artist, that crossed genres. Joni Mitchell and her music match that invoice.
“I wished some extra Canadian content material,” she provides. “I truly need to ship this improvised model to Joni.” She likens it to the “recomposed” albums, that are impressed by a selected piece, however improvise round it.
“I improvise,” she says of her compositional course of. It’s not one thing she typically does in a public live performance, however that will change. Her work with Mitchelll’s Blue has sparked a brand new course.
“I put this nugget of this lovely, beautiful tune on the album as a result of it’s type of the place I need to go subsequent.”
- Discover hyperlinks to pre-reserve, stream or purchase Souvenance [HERE].
- For those who’re on the East Coast, you may attend the Halifax album launch; particulars [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
