Showing posts with label Lara Solnicki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lara Solnicki. Show all posts

Thursday, April 29, 2021

Lara Solnicki - The One And The Other

Styles: Vocal
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 44:24
Size: 102,7 MB
Art: Front

(8:33) 1. Bit Her Sweet Christopher Street
(4:36) 2. Idée Fixe
(3:46) 3. The Embrace
(6:04) 4. Furling Leaf, Retrocede
(6:19) 5. I Pass a Glass
(7:16) 6. II Awe of the Sea
(7:46) 7. III Hollow the Need

Among feelings are nervousness and anxiety. While synonymous in any thesaurus, the two words differ in the same way that thankfulness and gratitude differ, that is, in focus. Nervousness and thankfulness often have no focus, no definite object creating them. Anxiety and gratitude are those feelings, those reactions to the specific. Something clearly gives rise to them. With regards to anxiety and disquiet, Canadian vocalist and composer Lara Solnicki uses "free jazz" and poetry as the stimulus for generating a mood of anxiety. Not anxiety in a bad way. More like a lack of clarity in an otherwise cohesive narrative. Solnicki presents this unease cinematically in discrete vignettes, or tone poems, each following its own creative arc, resolving or not, in a state still possessing tension, but one better realized than before.

The One And The Other is Scolnicki's third release, after A Meadow In December (Self Produced, 2010) and Whose Shadow (Inner Circle Music, 2014). The singer is hyperliterate, existing at a modern-postmodern interface where her art is informed equally by the other, often at the same time. Solnicki plants her spear in the sand in the cleverly entitled "Bit Her Sweet Christopher Street." The piece begins as if awakening, but not quite making it, falling back into that twilight that can disconcert. Jonathan Goldsmith's angular piano and Peter Lutek's screeching saxophone introduce the first fit of concern buoyed on Scott Peterson's bubbling electric bass. After a moment of respite, guitarist Rob Piltch 's Ben Monder-inspired glorious noise stirs the dream before emerging, not quite settled.

"Furling Leaf, Retrocede" is a spoken poetry narration carried slowly along by fractured and unrecognisable music, gently simmering with the occasional release of tension only to double down into further chaos. "Furling leaf, retrocede, whaft, near view" sets up a scene that develops into "Sheer currents beyond the finestra stir machines in this laundromat..." juxtaposing nature versus the mechanised. This performance could be envisioned performed at some yet unnamed, future Village Vanguard, at whatever a poetry slam is called in that way off time. Solnicki's words are clinical, astringent: "Green-yellow ataxia to the flushing gates -Twenty-one; Sixty Six...precocious tides with its attaches of amnesia...pleading sighs in the undertow / with swells of heaving flesh..." With music these are industrial visions, humid, clanging, insomniac: Hypnotic in the same way as Placidyl or Quaalude.

In this guise, this is no music with which to unwind after a typically hectic, post-COVID-19 day. But Solnicki does provide the tuneful interlude in the descriptively titled "Idée Fixe" (think Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique deconstructed to a schizophrenic piano-saxophone duet over a wandering bass). Her wordless melodies tie the piece together into the messy stuff of life. "The One And The Other" is a three section suite combining all the stylistic elements that have preceded them. It takes an informed talent to conceive of and then execute music and lyrics of this complexity.

Lara Solnicki is able to present disintegration in an orderly and understandable fashion. While this is not cocktail party music, it is rich food for thought and contemplation.~ C.Michael Bailey https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-one-and-the-other-lara-solnicki-outside-in-music

Personnel: Lara Solnicki: voice / vocals; Jonathan Goldsmith: keyboards; Peter Lutek: woodwinds; Hugh Marsh: violin; Rob Piltch : guitar; Scott Peterson: bass; Rich Brown: bass; Davide Di Renzo: drums.

The One And The Other

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Lara Solnicki - A Meadow In December

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 42:59
Size: 98.4 MB
Styles: Jazz vocals
Year: 2010
Art: Front

[4:57] 1. Gentle Rain
[4:26] 2. Lazy Afternoon
[2:02] 3. Sometimes I'm Happy
[4:59] 4. The Things We Did Last Summer
[3:18] 5. I Wished On The Moon
[4:10] 6. Lover Come Back To Me
[3:00] 7. Don't Go To Strangers
[4:14] 8. You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To
[3:27] 9. But Not For Me
[4:34] 10. Midnight Sun
[3:47] 11. Softly As In A Morning Sunrise

"To me, Miss. Solnicki is assuredly one of the finest jazz singers to emerge on the Canadian scene recently...the purity of her voice, her understanding of the most subtle nuances in lyrics and melody, and the freshness, intelligence and wit she invests in every interpretation. A new Canadian voice to discover." ~ Stanley Péan

Toronto-born Lara enjoys a busy performance schedule, appearing regularly at many of Canada’s most prestigious jazz venues with top flight musicians. She participated in the TD Toronto Jazz Festival 2009-2011, and has held four house gigs in fine dining restaurants. She received a BA in 2006 from The Glenn Gould School/ Royal Conservatory of Music, where she was the recipient of numerous scholarships, studying voice and piano in the Performance Diploma and Artist Diploma programs. With respect to jazz, Lara has studied extensively with Frank Falco, Shannon Gunn, Christine Duncan, and Bonnie Brett.

A Meadow In December