STEFAN SMULOVITZ

BOW & BRUSH: 12 SCORES OF NADINA TANDY

Redshift Records

Stefan Smulovitz: violin/viola/bass/Dvina/Enner/Lyra/Noon/Perkons/waterphone & gongs; Nadina Tandy, visual artist.

Smulovitz met Nadina Tandy in 2021, through a Vancouver, Canada New Music commissioning project, where visual artists were invited to create single-page graphic scores with a partnering musician.  Smulovitz and Tandy hit it off.  They decided to continue with their creative partnership. That resulted in this album.

This project is quite unique.  Stefan Smulovitz is a multi-talented musician who specializes in experimental, acoustic, and electronic music.  He is the creator of Kenaxis, a widely used and expressive software platform. There is an enclosed booklet in his CD package. It shares Tandy’s artwork that accompanies each of the twelve songs Stefan Smulovitz has created. They open with “The Pier.”  I can almost hear the waves splashing around the wooden pier posts, and seagull wings flapping against an endless open sky.

Track #2 continues the landscape mode.  This time, I hear sounds like the wind whistling against a microphone.  His violin sings the song called “Perseids” like the voice of a wild aquatic fish under the sea, being taped without its permission.

“Sunday Rain” is a composition that sounds eerie and mysterious.  Stefan Smulovitz creates moods with his music.  Electronic melodies mixed with molten bubbles of electroacoustic, synthesized textures, and various pulses set the time and tempos.  Even though his creativity reflects freedom and embraces improvised surprises, there is melodic beauty too, as bright and colorful as the accompanying paintings of Nadina Tandy.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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