Confluence
Ravello, 2023
8/10
A collection of solo percussion pieces by French Canadian composers, the Montréal artist David Therrien Brongo brings plenty of melody to this often meditative body of work that is quite exciting.
Patrick Giguère’s “Laisser Surgir” opens the listen with the warm vibraphone making for a reflective and soothing tone of beauty, and “Espace”, by Pierre Béluse, follows with a darker appeal of low rumbling versus twinkling moments of playful yet cautious song craft.
In the middle, “Trakadie” spends 11+ minutes mesmerizing us with its bare versus busy ideas that sometimes seems like found objects making calculated noise in the Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux original, while Claude Vivier’s “Cinq chansons pour percussion” spends 5 chapters mesmerizing us with its hypnotic patterns, strategic minimalism and firm bouts of agile and unpredictable percussive gestures.
A highly technical effort, one would think that a percussion only affair might be difficult to stay involved in, but Brongo easily captivates us with his rich ideas and both calm and hectic bursts.
Travels well with: Avner Finberg- The Four Seasons Of Isolation; Vincent Ho- Sandman’s Castle