Donna McKevitt: Sail
Leland Originals

To say Donna McKevitt's CV impresses is a major understatement. A one-time Miranda Sex Garden member, the London-based composer (b. 1970) is a classically trained violist, pianist, and vocalist who's worked with Nick Cave, Michael Nyman, and, on his final film Blue, Derek Jarman. She's created dance, film, and choral works and music for radio plays, fashion houses, and art installations. For the EP Sail, she drew on her extensive experience as a composer and highly developed abilities as an instrumentalist and vocalist to create four arresting productions, all written, performed, and produced by her.

“Air” immediately captivates with a forceful interlacing of wordless vocal snippets, their register-spanning cross-currents countered by a dramatic foundation of deep strings and muted horns. After that arresting introduction, “Alba” eschews vocals for a plaintive, classical-styled meditation based around a repeating viola figure, the elements again woven into layered counterpoint. Using a single viola as the lead voice, McKevitt proceeds to envelop it within a complex design of high- and low-pitched strings, the effect akin to a strings-only chamber ensemble with a violist the lead player.

She adjusts the mood dramatically for “Sfumato,” the intensity brought down to a subdued level for an almost sorrowful meditation of blurred piano and keening strings that grows even more affecting when a supplicating female voice is added. At EP's end, the elegantly flowing “Sail” barrels forth on surging waves of arpeggiated patterns, a connecting line to classical minimalism directly intimated in the chugging base the composer creates for a slowly unfurling mass of strings cresting on top.

March 2020