Eve Egoyan + Mauricio Pauly

Expanding her reach beyond contemporary notated music interpretations, Toronto’s Eve Egoyan has created her first all improvised session with these 10 selections. Her partner here is Costa Rican-born Vancouverite Mauricio Pauly, manipulating all sorts of prepared acoustic and electronic instruments. Proving that she hasn’t altogether abandoned more formal performing, Egoyan includes sequences of lyrical harmonies, cascading chords and key stops among the speedy note clusters, micro tones and dissected vibration which take up most tracks. With Pauly augmenting his voltage burbles, drum beat bundling and programmed electronic whizzes with jagged picking on the 37-string repurposed autoharp, Egoyan in turn spends more time clipping and stroking her piano’s internal strings than with sustained keyboard forays or single key emphasis.

What that mean is that tracks such as “Braid” and “Height” come across as if played by a bizarro string band. Underlined by stopped key percussion and swelling electronic drones, the pieces suggest a mishmash of bottleneck guitar flanges and amplified zither plucks that ping-pong throughout the sound field. Responses between melody and multiphonics are made more evident when an Armenian duduk’s nasal trills are melded with piano key extensions and electronic pitch bending.

Some tracks even have Egoyan bending her vocal tessitura into multiple hums and signs to harmonize or challenge Pauly’s sequenced intermittent squeaks, whistles and her own key splaying. Already established in the so-called classical music area, Hopeful Monster demonstrates that she could have a parallel career as an improviser.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Spore 2.Dive (Wait)3. Braid 4. Dialing With Abandon 5. Stilled Shadow 6. Single Spore Flexing Gently 7. Agree No Frown 8. Temper Hold, Taper 9. Height10. Effort Grind Braid

Personnel: Eve Egoyan (acoustic and augmented piano and acoustic samples) and Mauricio Pauly (live samplers, live processing, dekeyed chromaharp and, drum bundle)

— for Musicworks Winter 2023/2024