Jordan Nobles: Chiaroscuro
Redshift Records

Chiaroscuro is a fitting title for this collection of music by Canadian composer Jordan Nobles: not only does it identify one of the two chamber orchestra pieces presented on the release, the word, which generally refers to the use of extreme value contrast in painted works (Caravaggio a prime example), applies equally well to the dramatic stylistic contrast between the two compositions. That there would be such a difference is understandable when their dates of origin are considered, with fifteen years separating the creation of Chiaroscuro and 1999's earlier Pulses. It's not unreasonable to expect some noticeable degree of change would have occurred in his writing over that temporal span.

The recipient of a JUNO for ‘Classical Composition of the Year' as well as many other awards, the Vancouver-based Nobles is nominally a contemporary classical composer. Yet while the material on the new release suggests some degree of commonality between him and other composers, the two pieces stand apart as distinctly original creations, the title work especially. In exhibiting some degree of connection to Steve Reich's music and the American minimalism tradition, Pulses, not surprisingly, could be deemed derivative, though to Nobles' credit the material doesn't ape Reich baldly. Chiaroscuro, on the other hand, sounds like little else and impresses as wholly original. Had it been issued on Cold Blue, it would've sounded right at home, given a label whose roster includes Daniel Lentz, John Luther Adams, and others.

Presented in a revised 2020 form, Chiaroscuro is a fascinating thirty-minute exercise in motion and stasis, however oxymoronic that sounds. There is development of sorts, yet at the same time the material feels rooted in place, as if variations are being spun without advancing forward. A huge range of timbres is sourced from a cast of twenty-seven musicians, including six singers, which allows for a striking panorama of sonorities to emerge. While delicate sprinkles, ripples, and splashes of colour stitch together to form the music's glacial drift, sparkling sounds produced by harp, vibraphone, and glockenspiel imbue the material with a dreamlike, even magical quality. Bowed strings, vocals, piano, marimba, muted horns, and woodwinds add to the expansive soundworld, yet amazingly the music never loses its hushed character, despite the large number of instrumental forces in play. Nobles eschews conventional narrative development in the composition, opting instead for a design that's more akin to a large-format sound painting containing a multitude of textural detail. Elements do separate themselves from the whole—a tiny violin or flute figure here, a bass clarinet or trumpet phrase there—but Chiaroscuro largely registers as a total sound creation and an enigmatic one too. One visualizes concertgoers exposed to the work for the first time initially puzzled by its unusual character yet soon enough enchanted as they gradually surrender to its calming lull.

The waves of monotone marimbas, woodwinds, and strings that get Pulses moving immediately signify the work's ties to American minimalism, the gesture a reflection, one presumes, of the affection Nobles had for the music of Reich and John Adams at the time of its 1998 creation. For nearly fifteen minutes, instruments weave into intricate cross-patterns of graceful harmonic modulation, with Pulses more energized than Chiaroscuro yet capable of casting a potent spell too. Flutes, strings, oboe, piano, harp, and mallet instruments entwine, and passages hinting at a gamelan influence also surface, indicative of the broad range of forms that have exerted an impact on Nobles. The issue of influence notwithstanding, the material sounds beautiful when the arrangement presents such a lustrous well-spring of timbral colour.

July 2020