ravens - Extended album liner notes
Track List
Good Friends and Pretty Roads (3:18)
Candle Ice - excerpt (1:38)
First Snowfall (3:07)
Magnetic North (6:45)
Fall to Alaska (2:32)
Ice Worms (1:29)
Winter Lullaby (3:65
Follow (6:17)
Waltz of Wing and Claw: Movement 2 of “The Raven Conspiracy” (3:22)
North, Love (6:52)
Small Town Song (3:08)
TT 42:26
Credits
All songs by Carmen Braden
Except “Fall to Alaska” by Carmen Braden and Mark Adam.
Producer: Mark Adam.
Recording Engineer: Denis Martin, Mark Adam
Mixed: Denis Martin, Mark Adam.
Mastered: Denis Martin
Recorded at: Northern Arts and Cultural Centre, Yellowknife NT, and Music in The Woods, Gaspereau NS.
Musicians (Tracks listed in parentheses) Carmen Braden - vocals, piano, guitar(1), Hammond organ;
Mark Adam - drums, percussion, voice, piano, synthesizers
Andrea Bettger - violin (3,4,9)
Kathryn Oraas - violin (2, 3, 9)
Osmond Chiu - violin (3,5,9)
Anne-Marie Guedon - cello (2,3,9)
Pat Braden - electric bass, Chapman Stick (3,5,11)
Sean Robson - upright bass (1, 8)
Mary Kelly - piano (7)
Greyson Gritt - guitar (8)
Rick Spinney - banjo (11)
Choir - (11) - Andrew, Bill B, Bill G, Brian, Diana, Ewan, Eli, Elizabeth, Lynn, Mary, Olivia, Judy, Kerry, Lorne, Peter, Sean, Susan, Rae, Taffy, Trina, Val
Photos: Marcus Jackson, Carmen Braden, Hannah Eden
Graphic design: Marcus Jackson / Luckyjack Press
Translation: Yves Lécuyer
Canadian Music Centre: Glenn Hodgins, President & CEO
Centrediscs: Allegra Swanson, Producer
© 2016
Thanks to the ever so many who helped, especially: Eli, Val, Bill, Rae, Andrew, Kathy, Dave, Elizabeth, Trina, Avi. Also David Dowe, Pido Productions, Gourmet Cup, Bayside Bed and Breakfast, Blue Raven Bed and Breakfast, Northern Arts and Cultural Centre, CBC North.
Good Friends and Pretty Roads
The journey’s almost done, the war is lost but the battle’s won
And now I’ve changed my hopes to good friends and pretty roads
I know you’ll stay with me if I ask you to stay with me
But what I really need is blue sky and green tree
And as the sun goes down on this lonesome little town
It’s not the end I see it’s just another beginning
I hope that we both find other hands to hold
And along the way good friends and pretty roads
CANDLE ICE - exerpt
For more information, and for scores and parts, please visit the Canadian Music Centre.
Title: Candle Ice
Year Completed: 2014
Duration: 10 mins
Instrumentation: Piano, Violin, Violoncello, electroacoustic track
Premiere: Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, Gryphon Trio, August 6, 2014
Program Notes:
Candle Ice is a work evokes the final melting phase of the ice on Great Slave Lake, in Northern Canada. In the spring, the thick ice melts into long, interlocking shards which are commonly called candle ice. These crystalline shapes are pushed by the wind and waves to jostle against each other, creating beautiful masses of sound or delicate individual sound-events with a glassy or metallic timbre. The candle ice exists only briefly during the ice season, and eventually disintegrates and melts into lakewater. For this composition I have transformed observations and field recordings of candle ice in four ways:
1) Acoustic and aesthetic observations inform the activity of the music;
2) Transcriptions of the sounds create rhythmic and melodic motives;
3) Spectral analysis reveals further pitch material for harmonic organization; and
4) Physical structures of ice crystals are applied to the music’s formal design.
I believe that the ice formed in the North’s long winters is a quasi-biotic phenomenon, one that embodies a spiritual and ontological bridge between living and elemental forces. I believe the ice has a voice, and the sounds it produces in its natural state are an on-going, ecological form of music. My approach to the use of these sounds is a borrowing or re-performance of this music.
Candle Ice was written for the Gryphon Trio, and they premiered it at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, August 6, 2014.
First Snowfall
When the sky is swollen and your heart is frozen
there’s no time to wait just come on home then.
When the sirens and taxis are scraping the street
We won’t even hear them, we’ll close all the windows.
When we wake up in a world that’s black and white
Maybe the world will know what’s wrong or right.
Will you be my friend or will you be my fight?
And it all seems simpler when it snows.
When the air is bleeding and the water’s freezing
there’s no time to wait just come and free me
When the sirens and taxis take over the street
We’ll cut through the alleys, we’ll steal through the schoolyard.
When we wake up in a world that’s black and white
Maybe the world will know what’s wrong or right.
Will you be my friend or will you be my fight?
And it all seems simpler when it snows.
MAGNETIC NORTH
For more information, and for scores and parts, please visit the Canadian Music Centre.
Title: Magnetic North
Year Completed: 2016
Duration: 6:45
Instrumentation: violin and piano
Credits: Written for James Ehnes and Andrew Armstrong
Premiere: James Ehnes and Andrew Armstrong, Northern Arts and Cultural Centre Yellowknife NT, May 18 2016.
Program note:
The power to attract… this is the quality of something magnetic. Magnets with opposite charges pull towards each other; similar charges repel. A compass needle points towards the magnetic north pole. And whether it was 15,000 years ago, 50 years ago, or last week, people have been pulled, pointed, and attracted to Canada’s north. Even the magnetic north pole itself is on a journey: it is in continual motion due to changes in the Earth’s core. For over 180 years it has been observed moving north through the islands of the Canadian Arctic. Now the magnetic north pole has passed the geographic north pole and is actually heading south towards Siberia.
Magnetic North merges scientific information about magnets and the magnetic north pole with a personal reflection on my family’s journey to the north many years ago. Dedicated to my grandparents, Esther and Bill Braden, and their bravery which brought them to the north. And to their love for the place, for their family and for each other.