New music: Burnstick, Willie Nelson, Jon Gordon, Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy

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This article was published 07/06/2024 (824 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FOLK

Burnstick

Made of Sin (Independent)

The rich sound of Burnstick’s music is rooted in the lap-style slide playing of Jason Burnstick, a singer, songwriter and composer who uses a Weissenborn-style guitar — a uniquely designed wooden instrument with a hollow neck that expands its sound chamber and creates a hugely resonant tone. With his slide, Burnstick can wring keening notes from his guitar while also constructing a vivid, expressive underpinning.

When this sound is paired with the sweet voice and melodic finger-picking of Nadia Burnstick, the husband-and-wife team from St. Claude, creates wide-screen musical worlds.

In the past decade, the duo has released a children’s album, Dream Big, Little One (as Nadia Gaudet and Jason Burnstick), had a son, released the 2019 Juno-nominated album Kîyânaw as Burnstick, and composed songs and scores for film and TV productions, including the acclaimed ’60s Scoop series Little Bird.

With Made of Sin, Burnstick blends elements of traditional folk with cinematic soundscapes on a nine-song collection that encompasses a swath of themes and situations.

Closer, the breathtaking album opener, embodies the infinite love that comes with parenthood. On the title track, Jason addresses the unsettling horror of residential schools from the point of view of a survivor, while Killers in the Room is a haunting electric blues tune about emotional and psychological trauma.

All is not bleak, however, as Moonlit, the duet that follows the title track, and album closer Go Back will remind listeners that solace and security is often found in our love for others.

Recorded in Winnipeg at No Fun Club, as well as the couple’s home studio, Made of Sin also features the deft drumming and percussion of Daniel Roy, and the fluid bass of Bruce Jacobs. Four out of five stars

Stream: Closer; Made of Sin; Killers in the Room

— John Kendle

ROOTS

Willie Nelson

The Border (Sony)

Willie Nelson has never in his long life not wanted to be making music.

After 2023 saw him celebrate his 90th birthday with an epic two-night concert celebration at the Hollywood Bowl, get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and release two studio albums along with the usual constant touring, 2024 finds him as unretired as ever, with the release of The Border.

It’s his 152nd album, counting live collections and collaborations, according to Texas Monthly, which recently took on the titanic task of ranking them (The Border is No. 55).

Inflections of Mexican music have run through almost all of Nelson’s work, but he occasionally leans into it, as he did with the 1998 masterpiece Teatro. He does the same — sort of — with The Border, whose best tracks have heavy doses of the sounds of Mexico.

That includes the stark, dark, title track, written by Nelson favorite Rodney Crowell with Allen Shamblin and sung from the perspective of a Border Patrol agent. It begins like a Western with a standoff between the law and the cartels, but then comes a shift, when the agent despairs for his life and his family and empathizes with the people he takes into custody.

He throws jazzy spitballs through What If I’m Out of My Mind, a Western swing tune in the style of Texas’s Bob Wills, written by Nelson and Cannon. The duo wrote about half the songs on the album, and they’re generally the strongest.

A standout is Kiss Me When You’re Through, a driving-into-the-sunset tune marked by Nelson’s Latin-influenced guitar and the harmonica of Mickey Raphael, the only surviving member of the Family Band that backed Nelson for decades.

There’s not a bad song in the bunch. If there’s fault to be found with The Border, it’s that the stark desert tone established in the beginning isn’t sustained, and at times it swerves from bluesy rockers to country shuffles that are downright breezy. HHH1/2 ouf of five stars

Stream: The Border; Kiss Me When You’re Through

— Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press

JAZZ

Jon Gordon

7th Ave. South (ArtistShare)

Saxophonist Jon Gordon was born in New York but currently is a professor at the University of Manitoba faculty of music. He is also a former winner of the prestigious Thelonius Monk Saxophone Competition. His new album is a reference to the 7th Avenue area of Greenwich Village in New York that is (or was) home to many historic jazz clubs such as Sweet Basil and the Village Vanguard. As a young man, Gordon’s experience of the jazz vibe of 7th Avenue changed his life and steered him on his career.

Personnel here are mainly current or former U of M students and faculty who demonstrate their knowledge of each other and the music they are producing. Personnel includes Jonathan Challoner on trumpet, Walter Smith III on tenor, Alan Ferber on trombone, John Ellis on bass clarinet, Jocelyn Gould on guitar, Will Bonness on piano, Julian Bradford on bass, Fabio Ragnelli on drums and Erin Propp, who provides vocal on several tracks. There is a choir offering vocalese on several tracks and frankly it is the only feature of the album that doesn’t really work.

The music is a terrific mix of uptempo tracks and gentle ballads, with Gordon leading while offering substantial space to the band for fine solos. The title track is a solid mid-tempo tune that really shines.

Gordon’s soprano on the ballad Ponder This soars over the tune with perfect assistance from Bonness’s piano and Gould’s guitar. Vocalese by Joanna Majoko on this track works beautifully.

Paradox, the album’s longest track, has a complex rhythmic and harmonic structure that swings like mad with bass clarinet, trombone and trumpet solos along with Gordon’s tenor. It’s a standout. Propp’s vocal on the standard Here, There and Everywhere, is simply lovely.

Gordon explains about the sense of community that 7th Avenue instilled by giving him a chance to enlist musicians who create or reflect a community within the local jazz scene. I thank him for gifting us with even more than his “classroom:” responsibilities. HHHH out of five stars

Stream: Spark; Paradox

— Keith Black

CLASSICAL

Pavel Kolesnikov, Samson Tsoy, four-hand piano

Schubert — Music for Four Hands (Harmonia Mundi)

London-based pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy join forces on their first album together, with this release featuring a trio of thematically related chamber works penned by Schubert and Desyatnikov.

The artists first met as students at the Royal College of Music and now perform regularly together, sharing a simpatico approach to music making requisite for playing piano four hand works.

First up is Schubert’s Divertissement à la hongroise D. 818, Op. 54, teeming with emotional contrasts and atmospheric effects with its opening Andante immediately displaying the players’ close-knit artistry.

Marcia: Andante con moto is rendered with crisp attack, as is the more darkly hewn finale Allegretto, steeped in Hungarian vernacular, including lively syncopated rhythms and fiery runs.

Also included is the same composer’s Fantasie in F minor D. 940, Op. 103 penned during the last year of Schubert’s all-too-brief life in 1828, and a piece one never wearies of hearing. Its four inter-connected movements also further showcase the pianists’ sensitive lyricism, as each balances his partner’s sound. Highlights include the opening Allegro molto moderato, as well as the more forceful Largo.The penultimate Scherzo: Allegro vivace bristles with taut energy, leading to the luminous Finale: Allegro molto moderato, that restates the first movement’s haunting, primary theme before an exultant fugue and final, peaceful close.

Last but not least, the album features the world première recording of Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov’s intriguing Trompe-l’oeil, written to echo the Fantasie. This intriguing piece performed with great conviction by the players essentially distills the essence of its Schubertian forerunner, becoming its own meta-fantasy in the process. It’s also fascinating hearing it paired with the original work, attesting to both the composer and performers’ thirst for musical adventure, while pushing Schubert’s beloved, nearly 200 year old composition firmly into the 21st century. Four out of five stars

Stream: Fantasie in F minor D. 940, Op. 103; Trompe-l’oeil

— Holly Harris