Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Myra Melford / Tanya Kalmanovitch: Heart Mountain

182

Myra Melford / Tanya Kalmanovitch: Heart Mountain

By

View read count
Myra Melford / Tanya Kalmanovitch: Heart Mountain
Heart Mountain is the first duo recording of pianist Myra Melford and violist/violinist Tanya Kalmanovitch. Ajay Heble, artistic director of the 2003 Guelph International Jazz Festival, suggested a duet with Melford when unforeseen circumstances prevented the scheduled performance of Kalmanovitch's quartet. So successful was their unplanned meeting that they decided to reconvene for this 2005 studio effort.

Traveling similar artistic paths, Melford and Kalmanovitch share common interests and academic backgrounds. Melford, one of today's most original pianists and an exceptional bandleader, comes from a classical background with extensive studies in North Indian Music. Kalmanovitch's classical training follows a parallel path to Melford's, complete with academic studies in India.

With song titles inspired by locations in Alberta, Canada (Kalmanovitch's birthplace) and the Himalayas (where both have traveled), these brief free-form explorations uncover a variety of moods in short order; the average piece is less than three minutes long. Blending cautious accompaniment with imposing delivery, they share a conversational dialogue that moves from whispered confidence to impassioned argument with ease.

Revealing a wellspring of timbral potential, the pair uses extended techniques to generate a rich palette of tonal color. Melford's touch veers from resonant, pulverizing clusters to ghostly, under the lid string glisses. Kalmanovitch bows with sinewy élan one minute, tenuous grace the next; varying her attack with dramatic flair, she makes a perfect foil for Melford's all-encompassing style.

Despite their jazz credentials, it's their classical backgrounds that come to the fore in this unadorned setting. Folksy Bartokian dissonances ("Cave and Basin"), soaring romantic modernism ("Kaligandhaki"), Viennese school-inspired pointillism ("Wapama") and throttling, Carterian linearity ("Into a Gunnysack and Into the Kootenay River") all ebb and flow throughout the session. Only on "Annapurna" does Melford unveil her harmonium, invoking atonal minimalism more than Asiatic tradition. The only non-improvised piece on the album, the traditional "Kailash," closes the record on a sumptuous lyrical note.

Not exactly jazz in a conservatively traditional sense, this is freely improvised music played with heartfelt passion and soulful exuberance. Ripe with possibilities for further examination, Heart Mountain sounds like the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership.

Visit Myra Melford and Tanya Kalmanovitch on the web.

Track Listing

Cave and Basin; Three Sisters; Medicine Lake; Pika; Sulphur; Hoodoo; Babel; Kaligandhaki; Indefatigable; Into a Gunnysack and into the Kootenay River; The Kid on the Mountain; Athabasca; Annapurna; Daulaghiri; Wapama; Tueeulala; Anthracite; Heart Mountain; Kailash.

Personnel

Myra Melford: piano, harmonium; Tanya Kalmanovitch: viola, violin.

Album information

Title: Heart Mountain | Year Released: 2007 | Record Label: Perspicacity Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.