Gravity and Grace

***Winner of the 2014 JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year, “Gravity and Grace”***
***Winner of the 2014 WCMA for Classical Composition of the Year, “Gravity and Grace”***

Allan Gordon Bell has one of the most individual compositional voices of western Canada and is the creator of rich and mature aural landscapes, works of a profound spiritual quality. The listener feels herself on the prairie witnessing a soaring falcon, or in a mountain range or caught up in a storm. The horizon seems endless and you can feel the wind and the raw elements, as they might have been experienced by first nations and fauna before the arrival of Europeans. This CD from Centrediscs is the first devoted to Bell’s chamber music and is to be released on his sixtieth birthday. It includes the premiere recordings of four works, ranging from 1997 to 2012, including Trails of Gravity and Grace, and Field Notes, a new composition for the celebrated instrumental combination of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.

Performing these works is the Land’s End Chamber Ensemble of Calgary, devoted to Canadian and international new music, but also so much rooted in their home province that they can say they have joined in the composer’s journey for a quarter century or more in some cases. Joining the Ensemble is the great Canadian clarinetist James Campbell, also an Alberta native, as well as other excellent colleagues from Calgary. From beginning to end, Gravity and Grace has been a close collaboration between Allan Gordon Bell and Land’s End, and the music has been realized as authentically as humanly possible. Two previous Land’s End CD’s have won the Western Canadian Music Award for Outstanding Classical Recording, and the most recent Land’s End release on Centrediscs, My Life in Widening Circles, was nominated for a Juno Award in the Classical Composition of the Year category.

Works/Tracks

Field Notes
1 Confluence 4:34
2 Medicine Wheel 3:26
3 Fugitive Colours 4:01
4 Sunset Chorus: Outcrop 4:35

Phénomènes
5 Open Range 6:06
6 Éclair 1:49
7 Éruption solaire 4:15

Sweetgrass
8 Fields I 4:52
9 Smoke I 4:17
10 The World is a Box of Souls 4:53
11 Smoke II 6:28
12 Fields II 7:04

Trails of Gravity and Grace
13 Ascent 4:47
14 Cascade 2:41
15 Virga 5:03
16 Ephemera 3:00
17 Flight 3:49

PERFORMERS:
James Campbell, clarinet
John Lowry, violin
Beth Root Sandvoss, cello
Susanne Ruberg-Gordon, piano

REVIEWS:

“…Bolstered by great performances by the core piano trio and guests, Bell’s music shimmers and shrieks, grumbles and growls…” – Max Christie, The WholeNote

“Bell writes with a profound spiritual quality that is deeply grounded in the landscapes and geological features of western Canada and extends to the elements and inhabitants of this
region as well. The compositions on this recording express Bell’s ideals in a variety of ways. He references specific locations of the prairie landscape, evokes the songs of prairie denizens such as coyotes and birds, traces the graceful flight of prairie falcons, and touches on the Indigenous rituals surrounding the sweetgrass that grows wild in the region.” – J. Drew Stevens, CAML Review