Joseph Petric: SEEN
Redshift Records

Ask any experimental music devotee to name an innovative accordionist, chances are Pauline Oliveros will be the immediate choice—justifiably so, given how dramatically her work encouraged a new appreciation for the instrument's possibilities and for the recognition her Deep Listening ideas and projects received. But she's not the only one who's had a substantial impact on the way the accordion's perceived. Norwegian Frode Haltli has attracted deserved attention for the music he's released on ECM and Hubro, and Canadian Joseph Petric has likewise created a remarkable body of work over the course of four decades. As someone who's commissioned more than 350 works and issued music on Naxos, Chandos, Atma, CentreDiscs, and others, he deserves to be better known; perhaps this splendid new collection on Vancouver imprint Redshift Records will help change that. Though he's issued forty releases, SEEN is his first full-length since Elektrologos emerged in 2010, so it's been a while.

A fervent advocate for the work of contemporary composers, Petric's comfortable diving into innovative electroacoustic waters; he's as happy, however, to play the accordion unadorned to allow its inherent beauty to come through. Recorded in Toronto at Peristera Studios and produced by Peter Lutek, the album presents six works, five of them Petric commissions. Each is broached with the greatest care and sensitivity, with the accordionist attuning himself wholly to the world imagined by its creator and in the truest sense collaborating with the composer in rendering the material into physical form. Regardless of the piece performed, he does so probingly and with dexterity to capture the essence of the work.

He's more than performer on the opening selection, however. In using a solo cello piece as a foundation for a new work for accordion and electronics, Petric shares a composer's credit with David Jaeger, a founding member of the pioneering Canadian Electronic Ensemble and long-time CBC Radio associate. Spirit Cloud opens with dramatic flourishes, the brightness of the accordion's timbres arresting the attention right away. Across nine explorative minutes, electronics by Jaeger augment Petric's playing with a spooky undercurrent, the result an alien soundscape stabilized by the familiar gleam of the acoustic instrument.

All are single-movement pieces but for the three-part title work by Polish-Canadian composer Norbert Palej. They're all also long excursions, the shortest, Peter Hatch's Pneuma, eight minutes and Palej's twenty in total. As intimated by the opening movement title, “Vision of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque,” SEEN is a spiritually themed work, the composer's intent in this case to explore different visions within the Catholic faith. A contemplative character permeates the first movement as fluttering figures punctuate an unhurried stream of low-pitched chords. Thereafter the music ascends gracefully upwards in a trajectory naturally carrying with it religious connotations. “Mary's Hill” is more animated, with clip-clop patterns hinting at walking movements. Consistent with its title, “Miracle of The Sun” evokes the experience of awe in the simple unfurling of its radiant tones and gradual ecstatic turn. The generally peaceful tone of the work bolsters its mesmerizing effect, and that it proves so commanding testifies to Petric's ability to hold the listener's attention when nothing more than the accordion in its natural form is involved.

Robert May's Fadensonnen works its magic across fifteen minutes, the composer similarly imbuing his 1994 expression with a contemplative, serene aura. Petric sees Fadensonnen as a companion work to Linda Caitlin Smith's Low Tide, which says much about the character of May's creation. A focused concentration on note clusters and space is evident, as is a purposeful evocation of undulating light patterns and an attempt to use the accordion's range of timbres to generate painterly effects.

Not everything on SEEN is so comforting. With percolating synthetic sounds part of its makeup and the electronic textures animatedly commingling with the accordion's tones, Hatch's Pneuma inhabits a slightly more dynamic, even at times aggressive space than the others. Aptly titled, Erik Ross's electroacoustic setting Leviathan finds Petric sprinkling melodic filigrees across an ominous backdrop of unsettling atmospherics. SEEN concludes with its sole non-commissioned work, Metamorphoses (1964) by Swedish composer Torbjörn Lundquist. Despite being written decades before the other five, his lively, mercurial setting feels right at home in their company, in large part due to its rabid energy and Petric's engaged reading.

September 2022