Joanna Estelle: Emergence
Navona Records

Accountancy's loss is classical music's gain—or at least so it would appear based on this lovely compilation of works by Canadian composer, arranger, and lyricist Joanna Estelle. Her musical gifts were apparent at an early age—in her youth she studied classical piano and theory at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto—but, dissuaded from pursuing a career in music by her parents, she eventually studied Certified Management Accounting and worked thereafter in Canada's federal public service. But though success was achieved in that realm, her musical passion never waned, and she eventually completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in music at the University of Ottawa and Toronto's York University. Currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Sheffield, Estelle has seen her profile steadily rise with works performed and recorded by artists and choirs in Canada, the United States, and Europe. With its material performed by pianists (Frédéric Lacroix and Sonya Sweeney), cellists (Brandon Wilkie and Roland Gjernes), vocalists (baritone Laurence Ewashko and sopranos Morgan Strickland, Susan Elizabeth Brown, and Laura Dziubaniuk), and choral ensembles (Ewashko Singers and Capital Chamber Choir), this wonderful and aptly titled Navona Records collection should do much to help spread the word about Estelle's abundant gifts. (Emergence, by the way, is Canadian to its core, the composer herself being one and many of the other musicians too, and its material was recorded in three churches in Ottawa and Toronto during 2016-17.)

One of many things that impresses about the release is its sequencing, with ten short piano pieces followed by vocal songs, the latter group culminating in the ambitious Song for Abwoon. Placing the piano material at the outset was an especially smart move, given that the stark, single-instrument presentation accentuates the essence of Estelle's music: melody. Titled Umori [Moods], the ten miniatures grew out of an assignment in her Master's programme that required a theme be stated, developed, resolved, and concluded in little more than a minute. Realized by Lacroix, the work makes for a splendid entry-point into Estelle's world, especially when the range of moods is so bountiful and the material so expressive and filled with charm. A carefree, almost Gershwin-esque quality infuses some of them—the playful jaunt that is “Energico” and the resplendently chiming “Determinato,” for example—whereas others are solemn and imbued with longing and sadness (“Sognante,” “Pentito,” “Estroso”).

Estelle's music is unapologetically open-hearted, even in places sentimental, as “Susannah's Lullaby (This is a Face of Love)” and “Language of a Rose” illustrate. Commissioned and performed by soprano Susan Murray for a recital at Canada House, London (UK) in 1996, the songs are here delivered with great affection by Strickland with piano accompaniment by Lacroix plus cello by Wilkie on the second. The lullaby's a powerful ode to the joy children bring to a family, whereas “Language of a Rose,” its affecting vocal melodies amplified by cello, is ponderous and philosophical by comparison. In every text-based setting on the album, the tone of Estelle's musical presentation has been carefully tailored to match the content of the lyrics.

She also brings rich colour to the vocal songs by setting texts in different languages, Ukrainian Cyrillic text for “Moyi mamij,” Aramaic for “Abwoon d'bwashmaya,” and French for “Qu'est-ce que c'est la vie?” and “La chanson de ton coeur.” Written for her mother, who passed away shortly after it was completed, “Moyi mamij” conjoins the composer's emotionally expressive music to a poem her grandfather, Michael Sharik, at one time a Ukrainian nationalist leader, wrote for her to recite at a Mother's Day concert when she was ten years old; Wilkie and Lacroix again honour Estelle's music with their playing, though this time they support two singers, Dziubaniuk and Ewashko, who likewise honour the composer with heartfelt performances. The moving, rather Weill-like ballad “Qu'est-ce que c'est la vie?” pays homage to Diana, Princess of Wales, who Estelle, then working for the Governor Genera, met at Rideau Hall in Ottawa in 1992 during Diana's last official tour of Canada, while the lilting choral work “Water Canticle” honours Margaret Trudeau, former wife of the late Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada's fifteenth Prime Minister, and mother of Justin, the country's current leader, for her work with WaterCan, an Ottawa-based organization that assists poor communities in developing countries to build sustainable water supply and sanitation facilities. In coupling Brown and Gjernes, the cello-soprano combination intensifies the haunting character of Estelle's dignified “Abwoon d'bwashmaya,” an Aramaic rendering of the Lord's Prayer; the choral setting, “La chanson de ton coeur,” on the other hand, is as joyful as one would expect a song about Paris's Montmartre district to be.

Estelle's modern take on timeless sacred music, the twelve-minute Song for Abwoon caps the release with a remarkable setting inspired by the liturgical music of Hildegard of Bingen. Performed by the Ewashko Singers with Brown and Wilkie featured as soloists and flutes, oboe, violin, viola, cello, and bass fleshing out the arrangement, the piece speaks strongly on behalf of Estelle's considerable gifts in integrating its vocal and instrumental resources so effectively. Alternating between passages sung by the soprano and chorus in a manner reflecting the “call and response” between a cantor and congregation (and interspersing Aramaic passages from “Abwoon d'bwashmaya” in amongst its English text), Song for Abwoon achieves a chamber-like gravitas that's not worlds removed from a work of a similar kind by Arvo Pärt.

Interestingly, Estelle's epiphany regarding her life's purpose came to her somewhat by accident. During a California retreat in 1992, she shared with a well-known European musician her dream about being a composer, who in turn challenged her to write him a song within seven days. When she played for him a week later “Language of a Rose,” he admitted he never imagined she could write something of “such beauty and depth.” In essence, her vocation as a composer began at that moment when at the age of forty-two the most authentic way forward presented itself to her in the boldest of strokes.

May 2018