Aline’s étoile magique: éclipse

Whether 23andMe.com, MyHeritage.com, or ancestry.com can positively divine gypsy blood in award-winning, Canadian violinist Aline Homzy is conceptually and musically neither here nor there. What is important is that she jumps from the gate on her robust debut recording with a zesty momentum which she mightily sustains throughout.

Homzy, who has no problem mixing it up with any of Canada's musical vanguard, (guitarist & composer David Occhipinti, creative bassist Andrew Downing, the folky Weather Station, or pianist Amanda Tosoff) synthesizes it all (and, as the whole of Eclipse plays out, all in one performance) with the feel of a classicist on three day shore leave.

Whatever the influence of her musicologist father, Andrew Homzy, who just happens to be scholar on all things Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk or her studies with Mingus arranger Sy Johnson, Eclipse is an exciting and most intriguing encounter. Leading the pack, Homzy steers her most flexible and formidable Aline's étoile magique—vibraphonist Michael Davidson, guitarist Thom Gill, bassistDan Fortin, and drummer Marito Marques—through a series of compositional twists and turns which keep listeners guessing and listening intently.

"Caraway" with its gypsy yearnings, sails along on the keen interplay between Davidson and Margues, and serves to buoy Homzy's high country wail. "Cosmos" floats in on clouds of Davidson's vibes as Homzy's clear-voiced violin sings a song of faraway homes. The tune turns into a free form passage, then turns again into something more studied, yet free of definition. Which is how the violinist likes it.

The Japanese call it hanakotoba (the language of flowers). So "Hanakotoba" here is a wistful daydream, something to calm the nerves as the sun goes down. "Circa Herself" is a bright dance infused with Caribbean ocean breezes. Then the tide rushes in and the tune becomes even brighter, as João Frade's accordion trades off with Homzy and everyone gets in on the cha cha.

Guitarist Gill catches the melodic grit on Eclipse's sole cover, Charlie Parker's "Segment." "Aliens are Pieces of Wind" is a fun bit of deconstruction, prog rock but thankfully not quite. The imaginative, "Mesarthim," with its manipulated theremin and synth wraps itself around Homzy's chamber-like performance. "Le belle et l'abeille" (beauty and the bee) imagines a warm, sunshine day then invites listeners to share it with the band. And it is that open invitation which lies at the big heart of Eclipse.

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