Placentia Bay is the final opus in a trilogy that began in 2010 with Aim for the Roses, and continued with Omnis temporalis in 2022. In it, Mark Haney revisits characters and events from Canadian history. While Aim for the Roses was inspired by Montreal car stuntman Ken Carter, and Omnis Temporalis by the character of George Sprott, a fictional Canadian TV host who appeared in the New York Times, Placentia Bay: Summer of 1941 reconnects with reality, taking as its subject the meeting held in 1941 in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, between Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. This meeting was to be decisive in shaping the post-war era.
Placentia Bay differs substantially from previous albums in that Haney limits himself to instrumental music, with the exception of a few choral passages. Aim for the Roses was a spoken-word piece, while Omnis Temporalis is a chamber opera. What unites the three works, however, is the marked presence of the double bass as a discursive and solo instrument. Understandably so: Haney is a double-bass player. Here, unlike the first two parts of the trilogy, Haney has entrusted this important role to a colleague, Meaghan Williams, a leading Canadian artist and student of Joel Quarrington. She is a performer of impressive technique and almost infinite nuance. Well done!
Placentia Bay unfolds in just three movements, resulting in some 22 minutes of a kind of concerto for double bass, orchestra and chorus. At first, the fragmented nature of the musical discourse is disconcerting, revealing (at first glance) in disarray vaguely folkloric melodies, Hollywood-like outbursts and episodes of deconstructed, almost random dialogue. Further listens reveal the discursive logic of the whole, and allow receptive ears to appreciate the beauty of the Vancouver-based musician’s orchestral writing. Ordered chaos imbued with a highly visual narrative force.
