Sherry Finzer: Renewal
Heart Dance Records

Michele McLaughlin: Sketches
Michele McLaughlin

The latest chapter in her “Naked Flute” series, Sherry Finzer's Renewal is distinguished by a number of details, foremost among them her intoxicating playing. Mastery of her instrument is evident throughout the fifty-minute recording, and the vibrato-rich sound she sources from the concert C, alto, bass, contrabass, and Native flutes enchants; each of the eleven pieces also captures the remarkable poise, maturity, and control she has developed. Enhancing the performance is the physical conditions under which it was created. Finzer recorded the set at the Tank, built around 1940 as a railroad water-treatment facility and moved to Rangely, Colorado in the mid-‘60s to be used as part of a fire-suppression system. That plan never came to fruition as underlying shale couldn't support the weight of the filled tank, which eventually resulted in the site being utilized as a performance and recording space by artists such as Roomful of Teeth, Jessica Meyer, Bill Frisell, and, of course, Finzer (an excellent “Making of” video for the album is available at YouTube).

One could mistake Renewal, the second recording she's made at the site, as a collection of formally composed pieces, given the clarity with which each presents itself, structurally and melodically. They're improvisations, however, spontaneous expressions recorded in a single day at the site and real-time externalizations of her inner state. Though Finzer anticipated the tone of what she would play might be sad and forlorn (given the pandemic period during which it was recorded), the meditations that emerged were largely serene and soothing, qualities generally associated with her output as well as others on her Heart Dance Records label. Yes, melancholy does arise (see, for example, “Heartache” and “Solitude”), but for the most part the music lifts the spirits with the promise of rebirth (whether by accident or design, the heavenly flute melody in the closing title track recalls one from the sublime fourth movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony). The reverberant echo that accompanies her playing gives the recording a dramatic, multi-dimensional feel, and in featuring the sound of a single acoustic instrument Renewal takes on a timeless quality too. Call it New Age, healing music, whatever—Finzer's expressions are compact, five-minute statements of authentic and genuine character.

Like Renewal, Michele McLaughlin's Sketches is a solo instrument recording, in this case a forty-five-minute collection of piano works recorded at the artist's home studio in Salt Lake City, Utah on her Fazioli Concert Grand. It's fully improvised, though, to be precise, several of the thirteen pieces were spontaneously created during the recording process whereas others are fresh spins on ones featured in her “Monday Morning Improvisations” series at YouTube. McLaughlin is twenty albums into her career (the first, Beginnings, arrived in 2000), so it's understandable that the playing on Sketches would be marked by confidence and assurance. Don't let the title fool you into thinking the material's unfinished or lacking in polish.

Many a mood's encountered as the recording plays. “At First Sight” initiates the set hauntingly with a melancholy waltz, McLaughlin's command of her instrument and muse already apparent. The material is so coherent a statement, one comes away from it hearing it as more formal composition than improvisation—not the last time the impression will form. Many a song title cues the listener, with one such as “Farewell Little Love” naturally overflowing with the ache of parting. Whereas yearning permeates the measured lilt of “Hope,” gratitude emanates from “One Life” when McLaughlin's interweave conveys warmth and affirmation. In contrast to the radiance of some settings, greyer skies are evoked by the pensive “Waiting” and elegiac “Lost.”

March 2021