Gayle Young: As Trees Grow

Born in St Catharines, Ontario, in 1950, Gayle Young has had an abundance of eclectic music-related roles during her career. In addition to her being a composer and performer, these have included designing and building new musical instruments, sound sculpting and installations, journalism (she wrote for Musicworks from 1978 and was its managing editor-in-chief from 1987 to 2007) and other writing—notably, The Sackbut Blues (1990), a biography of electronic music pioneer Hugh Le Caine.

Given all of that, Young's discography is something of a surprise as the current release is only her fifth, the first having been the LP According (JWB Music, 1980) with sound artist Reinhard Reitzenstein, and the most recent Gayle Young Plays Yoko Ono's Secret Piece (Electronic Music Foundation, 2013). All of which makes As Trees Grow a most welcome arrival...

The album's ten tracks have a total running time of fifty-six minutes; they are not ten separate tracks but three distinct pieces, the three-part "Ice Creek" the parts being interspersed through the album, the six-part "Forest Ephemerals : Four Flowers," and the twenty-minute title piece. All of them were performed by the couple of pianist Xenia Pestova Bennett, with Ed Bennett on live electronics, and were recorded at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen's University, Belfast. It seems significant that those three pieces and their constituent parts all make reference to aspects of nature; at the album launch in April 2022, Young and Pestova Bennett were in conversation with local wild food foraging expert Claire McQuillan about edible plants and our relationship with the environment. Furthermore, several of the tracks here deploy field recordings of natural sounds, notably the ice-covered waterfall heard on the "Ice Creek" tracks.

Despite such additions and the role played by Ed Bennett's electronic processing, the piano totally dominates the album, capturing and holding the listener's attention throughout. Young's compositions manage to include a great deal of fine detail for the piano without crossing the line and sounding cluttered; by and large that is achieved by avoiding overuse of chords. As well as Young herself, credit is due to Pestova Bennett whose playing is exemplary throughout, allowing every note space to be heard yet never sounding rigid.

All things considered, this album is a triumph for all concerned, and leaves one hoping that further albums of Young's compositions will soon follow.

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