Linda Catlin Smith: Volume One: The Plains: Cheryl Duvall, piano
Redshift Records

Cheryl Duvall's recording of Linda Catlin Smith's The Plains has an air of inevitability about it. Before the release of the Toronto-based pianist's 2020 debut solo album Harbour, Duvall had commissioned a series of hour-long pieces by Canadian composers, among them Anna Höstman (her music the exclusive focus of Harbour), Daryl Jamieson, Lieke van der Voort, Jason Doell, James O'Callaghan, Keiko Devaux, and, of course, Smith. As new music aficionados well know, the American-born Canadian composer's profile has risen considerably over the past decade, largely due to the exposure she's received for her releases on Another Timbre. The label's affinity for minimal music dovetails seamlessly with Smith's introspective style, and awareness of the artist and imprint has grown hand in hand.

Duvall's relationship with the NYC-born and Toronto-based Smith began in the early 2000s when she was an undergraduate at Wilfrid Laurier University and, wanting to satisfy her growing interest in contemporary repertoire, took a composition course Smith was teaching. When years later Duvall and violinist Ilana Waniuk formed the chamber group Thin Edge New Music Collective, the two included Smith's music in their first concert and later commissioned from her the twenty-six-minute piece Dark Flower. Now, Duvall's not only recorded The Plains, written for the pianist and laid down at Toronto's Noble Street Studios on Dec. 13, 2024, but is issuing it as the first in a four-volume chronicle of the composer's complete piano works.

At sixty-eight minutes, The Plains is Smith's third-longest piece and in its patient unfolding is emblematic of her style. It's minimal, but it's not minimalism: while repetition is at times present, there are no cyclical patterns or rhythmic cells of the kind one might encounter in a minimalism classic such as Riley's In C. There's structure too, yet one not so clearly delineated that the music's direction ever feels wholly predictable. The work organic is overused yet applies here when the music blossoms in a kind of graceful slow motion. It's an immersive, ponderous, and pensive work that requires full engagement from the listener, especially when it arrests the oft-frenetic pace of life today and asks that we slow down, keep distractions at bay, and attend to each moment.

The vast scope intimated by the work's title finds its counterpart in the clarity and resonance of Duvall's elegant playing. As pregnant pauses between notes resound, overtones ripple through the spaces to suggest sound echoing through plains stretching as far as the eye can see. Touch and sensitivity are critical here, as intimated by Smith's comment that “when I use the word ‘pillowy' about a certain chord, she knows what that touch is.” Her thoughts about hiking are telling too in the way they mirror how her music at times winds back to start again and undertake a different direction: “It's like the feeling of ‘Should I take this trail or that trail?' or ‘Where does this trail lead?' if you're hiking in the woods. You don't know, you might have to backtrack.”

As accessible as Smith's music is, it's not without challenges to convention. Rather than deploy a transition to move from one section to another, she might use a moment of silence as a bridge. Traditional ideas about resolution, narrative arc, and development are also questioned but always congenially. Moments that might initially appear static or wayward assume clearer definition upon repeated exposure. Smith's also not afraid to digress and let the music take her where it will, and as serene as its surface is, it's not without drama, energy, or tension either (consider the combustible episode at the thirteen-minute mark). However tempting it might be to classify The Plains as a classical work, it shares little with traditional solo piano writing of the kind associated with Brahms or Schubert. One might be better to think of it as an extended ambient-soundscaping reverie scored for solo piano as opposed to electronics.

November 2025