Queen Mab (Quebec, Ontario): two old friends in conversation, 40 years after their first public performance. They chat, they quibble, they gossip. Sometimes they get carried away, argue, comment. Scattered passages give way to denser ones. The clarinet speaks abundantly while the piano cuts through, stands firm, bathed in a theatrical light. From time to time, at the end of a soaring or boisterous passage, a moment of silence, a pregnant silence, a guarantee of what’s to come, settles in, fully respected by the listeners, then thickens before slipping away, chased by a new incantatory assault, another page of dialogue with the stars.
All of this is linked and coiled and uncoiled, overturned and projected into the air before landing back on its feet to better disappear, vanishing into the darkness of the cabaret’s velvet drapes.
