Rael Jones: Mother Echo
Silflay Records
textura characterized Rael Jones's 2013 Mandrake release as exuding “a melodic grace and at times unabashed emotional intensity,” and much the same could be said of its long-gestating follow-up Mother Echo. If the emotional temperature of its chamber classical material is high, it's easily explained: the sketches for all ten of its pieces were written in the wake of his mother's death, resulting in an intensely personal collection. Jones also discloses that, in a sense, he'd lost his mother years earlier when at the age of six she was involved in a car crash that permanently changed her. Experiencing such a traumatizing event at a young age left a profound and lasting mark on him, and one is reminded of such circumstances when confronted with the anguish that occasionally informs the music. It's hardly coincidental that the November 17th release date coincides with the fifth anniversary of her death.
By his own admission, Jones, an award-winning composer known for his film and television scores, aspires to translate emotions and life events into musical form. The result is melody-rich material that's openhearted and expressive in the extreme. Similar to the earlier release, Mother Echo augments Jones on piano with string players, in this case violinists Sara Wolstenholme and Marijie Johnston, violist Michael Gurevich, and cellist Brian O'Kane.
The tone of the album is established immediately by “Ascension Bells” when strings and piano unite for voicings so passionate they verge on ecstatic. Jones's gift for distilling extreme emotional states into ravishing music is accounted for magnificently in this scene-setter. A broad range of moods and styles is explored on the recording, with “The Catastrophist” plaintive and elegiac and “Coexistence” mysterious and majestic. Whereas “The Syntax of Things” presents a jaunty, spirited dance in 5/4, “Valley of Desolation” is haunting in keeping with a title that refers to the river location where his mothers ashes were scattered.
Whereas some pieces are drenched in strings, others feature piano alone. That reduction doesn't diminish the music's effectiveness, however, as the lovely settings “The Passage of Time,” “Hold Until Silent,” and “Peaceful Animals” illustrate so resoundingly. Jones's mid-album detour into solo piano performance ends up enhancing the release in providing counterpoint to the pieces featuring strings. It's tempting to cite other composers as reference points—Debussy, Nyman, and Dario Marianelli come to mind—but Jones's material holds up perfectly well on its own; if comparisons are made, his music doesn't suffer as a result. Among other things, the recording gracefully honours the memory of his mother, who would no doubt be deeply touched were she able to hear it.November 2020