New Release: Songs and Quartets from Owen Underhill and Quator Bozzini

 

New Release:   Songs and Quartets from Owen Underhill and Quator Bozzini
Label:  Collection QB
Release Date:  June 27, 2025
Websites:  https://quatuorbozzini.ca/fr/discographie?filtre=collectionqb
https://collectionqb.bandcamp.com/album/owen-underhill-songs-and-quartets

From Collection QB, Quatuor Bozzini's in-house label, comes a body of work from their longtime collaborator, the Vancouver based composer Owen Underhill, entitled Songs and Quartets.  The recording pairs two separate string quartets, String Quartet No. 2 and String Quartet No. 5.  Sometimes performing pure instrumentals and sometimes supporting vocals performed by countertenor Daniel Cabena, alongside Jeremy Berkman on tenor sacqueboute/trombone and Quatuor Bozzini on violin cello.   The lyrics are taken from the poetry of seventeenth century authors Henry Vaughan and Sir Walter Raleigh.  On the recording, chamber music strings are fastened to operatic vocals and jazz-inspired soliloquies from Berkman's trombone.  The correspondence between the three elements form stirring arrangements, straddling lyricism and experimentalism.  The scores lead the listener along a singular path, driven by Cabena's vocals with the strings and trombone creating an atmospheric mist circling the vocals on "The Retreat" and "What Is Our Life."  There is an ecclesiastical reverence vibrating through the 4-track series "Northern Line - Angel Station" performed by String Quartet No. 2.  The enigmatic musings of the strings wander with a purpose, communicating messages to the listener in a language comprehended by an incorporeal part of its beholder.  Underhill gives the tracks a ghostly aura that both mystifies and elevates the audience.

Musicians:
Quatuor Bozzini - composer
Alissa Cheung - violin
Clemens Merkel - violin
Marina Thibeault - alto
Isabelle Bozzini - violincello
Daniel Cabena - countreténor
Jeremy Berkman - sacqueboute ténor