After having taught at Wilfrid Laurier, McGill, Carleton, and the University of Ottawa, Canadian composer/musicologist James Wright is a Full Professor of Music in Carleton’s School for Studies in Art and Culture. Amongst his many accomplishments, he is distinguished as being the first musicologist in the history of McGill University to be awarded a Governor General’s Gold Medal. This upcoming album, De Mille Feux, features Wright’s composition for string quartet, Ellen at Scattergood. This work is a commission by David Cray as a gift for his wife, Ellen, and as a reflection of their time together on Lac Scattergood, Quebec. American composer Dr. John Cornelius II writes: “Ellen at Scattergood is a really decisive string quartet with attitude! The pacing of the movements really allows the listener to get inside the piece, and it takes traditional forms and genres (Tarantella, Waltz, Rondo) and turns them on their ear. This is a brilliantly sophisticated work that has nothing to prove, except its composer’s audacity.” The album was recorded in July 2020 by the Andara Quartet of Montreal: Marie-Claire Vaillancourt (violin), Jeanne Côté (violin), Vincent Delorme (viola), and Dominique Beauséjour-Ostiguy (cello), with Veronica Galicia (recording engineer).November 4, 2022, is the anticipated date for the release of De Mille FeuxAlbum Booklet 

Christina Haldane is thrilled to present Tu Me Voyais, her first record on Leaf Music set to be released on October 21, 2022. Tu Me Voyais is the result of the collaboration between Christina Haldane and Carl Philippe Gionet, along with several other artists, writers, and composers who have contributed their own offerings.The album is anchored around Gionet’s new arrangements of Twelve Acadian Folk Songs, tailored for Haldane’s voice. These re-imaginings are set in the 19th century lieder aesthetic or art song where voice and piano play equal solo parts within the musical architecture.Carl’s approach to the Acadian folk song arrangements is rooted in the oral tradition, where music and texts are passed orally from generation to generation, without the use of musical notation. He selected folk songs that were already committed to his memory, passed on to him orally from family members and childhood musical activities. In the arrangements, Carl has remained as faithful as possible to his musical memory. He has also taken liberties with the traditional texts, often re-working the order of the storytelling, making omissions, and creating repetitions to enhance the dramatic arc of the pieces. Christina Haldane est ravie de vous présenter Tu me voyais, son premier album pour la maison de disques Leaf Music, à paraître le 21 octobre 2022. Tu me voyais est le fruit d’une collaboration entre Christina Haldane et Carl Philippe Gionet, avec plusieurs autres artistes, auteurs et compositeurs ayant apporté aussi apporté leur contribution.L’album trouve son ancrage dans les nouveaux arrangements de Carl pour Douze chansons folkloriques acadiennes, conçus pour la voix de la soprano. Ces nouvelles versions des chansons s’inscrivent dans la lignée esthétique des Lieder du dix-neuvième siècle, qui correspond aussi au genre musical de la mélodie, dans lequel la voix et le piano interprètent tous deux des parties solos sur un pied d’égalité dans l’architecture même de la musique.L’approche adoptée par C. P. Gionet pour l’arrangement des chansons folkloriques acadiennes trouve racine dans la tradition orale, avec la transmission orale de la musique et des textes d’une génération à la suivante, sans recours à la notation musicale. Il a choisi des chansons folkloriques qui étaient déjà enracinées dans sa mémoire et qui lui avaient été transmises par voie orale par des membres de sa famille et lors d’activités musicales à l’enfance. Dans ses arrangements, il est resté fidèle autant que possible aux versions que renfermait sa mémoire musicale. Il a également pris certaines libertés vis-à-vis des paroles traditionnelles, en changeant souvent l’ordre du récit, en omettant certains éléments et en créant des répétitions quand cela était nécessaire pour donner une plus grande ampleur dramatique aux pièces.Album Booklet

"A Woman's Voice" is an album written for female voices and piano. The repertoire is inspired by literature that celebrates the female spirit and their challenging, and changing, roles throughout history. The multi-lingual lyrics (English, French, and Mandarin) reflect the multicultural Canadian ethos and presents a wide spectrum of text, including ancient Chinese poems from the Tang Dynasty, a war poem by English poetess Charlotte Mew, as well as Alice Ho’s collaborations with seven Canadian writers across the provinces: Marjorie Chan, Madeleine Thien, Carole Languille, Phoebe Tsang, Tong Wang, Thomass Muir, Anna Camara, and Michael O'brien. These writers span a wide range, both in their racial and geographic diversity, as well as where they are in their careers.“A Women’s Voice” features an “all Canadian” lineup. Many astounding young performers have contributed passionately to this album, including pianist/vocalist Jialiang Zhu, coloratura lyric soprano Vania Chan, soprano Katy Clark, soprano Maeve Palmer, soprano Ariadne Lih, mezzo soprano Alex Hetherington, pianist/writer Tong Wang, and cellist Andrew Ascenzo.This recording intends to aim the spotlight at women’s empowerment and strength by leading the audience through a cross-cultural musicscape, and ultimately serves as a reflection on how women of the past and present navigate love, desire, grief, and hardship.Alice Ho’s opera, “Chinatown” premiers this September at The Vancouver PlayhouseAlbum Booklet

"The Equation of Time" is the Charke-Cormier Duo’s third album and their second to feature recital programming that spans various genres and styles. Like their first album, Ex Tempore, it showcases their shared aspiration to play music both old and new, original works and arrangements, to explore the stunning timbral combination of flute and guitar. Although both the album and its titular work were planned long before coronavirus became a household name, it is uncanny yet fitting that this recording project took place amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an event that has greatly disrupted our sense of time. The Equation of Time exemplifies how truly special art can result when the artists are given the time and space to communicate and create.Album Booklet

Halifax-based record label Leaf Music is pleased to announce the release of cellist Robert DeMaine and pianist Peter Takács’s 2-disc album of Beethoven’s complete works for piano and cello. Set to be released July 8 2022, this stunning collection showcases Beethoven’s unprecedented textures and formal innovations found in his sonatas for cello and piano. DeMaine is a master of Beethoven’s conversational tone and technical flourishes, playing with “lapidary technical precision, and a persuasive identification with the idiom of the music at hand,” While Takács showcases the composer’s experiments in harmony and form with his noted ability to communicate musical interpretations.Album Booklet

This 2-disc recording, Virtuosa, encompasses 15 works that were either composed or performed by women, and was recorded on historical instruments. This project is set to be released on June 24, 2022.Since 2017, one of Infusion Baroque’s primary initiatives has been The Virtuosa Project, a series of concerts, lectures, and web videos dedicated to women musicians of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. This project, which highlights over a dozen relatively unknown women who made substantial contributions to Western classical music, has generated a great amount of interest at a local and international level, resulting in requests from international presenters for the ensemble to tour the Virtuosa program in the United States, France and the U.K.The CD includes a comprehensive booklet and companion website which includes stories, images, and archival material pertaining to the women featured on the recording. The objective is to provide cultural and socio-economic context for the women’s lives as well as for their music, and to highlight their accomplishments in the face of adversity. Many of the featured women were pioneers in their field.Album Booklet 

Montréal pianist Isabelle David’s debut solo album includes 14 works from pianist and composer Auguste Descarries. Two of these are previously unreleased contributions to Quebec piano literature. Decarries holds a special place in Ms. David’s musical background, as her maternal grandmother was one of the students who benefited from his teaching. This special link and the discovery of the composer’s manuscripts led Ms. David to pursue a doctorate in music performance, where she devoted four years of research to Descarries’s piano works.Album Booklet

Baritone Nathaniel Watson and pianist Michael McMahon, both based in Montreal, give us their rendition of Franz Schubert's monumental song cycle, Winterreise, written in 1827, the year before Schubert's tragic, early death. The 24 settings of poems of Wilhelm Müller are a journey deep into the psyche of a young man, unlucky in love, who sets out with neither friend nor destination, in the dead of winter, an epic figure in the dawning of German Romanticism. In this recording, also made in winter (and during a pandemic), Watson and McMahon share their experience and lifelong passion for Schubert. The composer, who had already composed some 600 Lieder in his short life, confessed to his close circle of friends that these songs moved him more than all the others.Album Booklet

Carolo  features 10 sonatas written by a mysterious “Mr Carolo,” whose identity remains an enigma for scholars and musicians alike. Educated guesses have been made to equate Carolo’s identity to Carolus Hacquart, a Flemish composer and Viol player, or an anonymous English “Mr. Charles,” inspired by the 17th-century trio sonatas.  Although the Carolo sonatas were written for smaller ensembles, the original edition served as a blank canvas to fulfill Space Time Continuo’s mandate of featuring the rich textures and wide soundscape possible in the continuo section. Sonatas IX, III, V and X were conceived with augmented forces and sonatas IX and III are new arrangements for 3 solo bass instruments and continuo. Sonata VI is performed with two bassoons, harpsichord and bowed bass (5-string low-pitched bass violin) but the other five are closer to what was suggested by the original publisher’s title page: “two solo bass instruments plus one continuo,” but with variation in the instrumentation of the solo voices and keyboard choice.Watch Sonata IX by M. Carolo performed by Space Time Continuo   

Society, musical conventions, and tastes inevitably change and develop over time, but the shared human experiences that artists draw upon do not. The two overarching ideas that Lara Deutsch and Phil Chiu used as inspiration for this album are dreams and journeys. Dreamy music is often associated with relaxation and easy-listening -- but don’t be fooled; this music has wickedly fast and thrilling sounds that capture the chaotic nature of dreams as well!Watch Album Trailer HereDescribed in La Presse as “a pianist-painter who transforms each musical idea into a beautiful array of colours,” Philip Chiu is acclaimed for his brilliant pianism, sensitive listening, and a presence that eschews the hermit-pianist image in favour of openness, authenticity, and connection.Named one of 2020’s Rising Stars by BBC Music Magazine, flutist Lara Deutsch is a versatile soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player known for her engaging warmth and ability to connect with audiences. Recipient of the $125,000 Prix Goyer for collaborative artists in 2019-2020, she is happiest when performing chamber music with her favourite musical partners.Album Booklet