Ensemble Obiora: Sisterhood in music

An all-female, feminist concert and an example of cultural diversity in contemporary music, Ensemble Obiora’s Sororité (Sisterhood) drew a large audience to Salle Pierre-Mercure yesterday afternoon. Led by Janna Sailor, the programme featured the music of Reena Ismaïl, one of the most exciting voices in contemporary music, for a too rare time in Montreal. After a rather academic opening composition (Rachel McFarlane’s When Enchantment Comes, inspired by Oscar Peterson but rather unrepresentative of the pianist’s music), it was the Indo-Western fusion universe of Ismaïl, a composer of Indian origin living in the United States, that provided the most colourful moment of the afternoon. Meri Sakhi ki Avaaz (My Sister’s Voice), for chamber orchestra, soprano and Hindustani singer (the classical vocal style of North India), offered a spellbinding encounter between two very different vocal styles, set against a romantico-impressionist orchestral backdrop (Debussian to be precise, but with evident indian colourings) with no contemporary harmonic asperities, but expertly detailed. The work opens with a tape extract of the famous flower duet from Léo Delibes’s opera Lakmé (set in India), followed by a more ‘authentic’ version of this melody, sung by soloist Anuja Panditrao (excellent). 

Lyric soprano Suzanne Taffot joins in later and the two women talk about friendship and sisterhood in an echo of the more than famous opera aria (so often used in advertisements). The meeting of the two types of singing is very well balanced and skilfully constructed by Ismaïl. The finale even demands a great deal of virtuosity from Taffot, who imitates the virtuosic flights typical of Hindustani singing with great precision. Well done!

The concert’s finale was Amy Beach’s Gaelic Symphony, a work long neglected but almost on the way to becoming a staple of the repertoire. Sailor’s reading called for great precision, generally offered by Obiora, apart from occasional rhythmic inaccuracies. Above all, the orchestra offered a beautiful, full ensemble sound, transcending its character as a ‘large chamber orchestra’ rather than a true symphony orchestra. 

The Obiora ensemble is proving to be an important addition to the musical landscape of Montreal and Quebec, because if the large, diverse, family-friendly and above all attentive audience is anything to go by, it has succeeded in winning the loyalty of a new audience to whom it introduces a little-known and inspiring repertoire. An EDI success that must be celebrated!