Post-minimalism at its best. We’re already fairly familiar with Rebecca Foon, cellist on the Montreal indie scene (Esmerine, Silver Mt. Zion, Set Fire To Flames). We’re less familiar with her sister, Aliayta Foon-Dancoes, a classical violinist for a time based in London, where she played with the city’s major orchestras and screen projects. When Aliayta went to study at Princeton in composition (that’s in New Jersey), the new-found closeness prompted the two sisters to join forces to make music together. The Covid pandemic did the rest. A retreat in the Quebec Laurentians (north of Montreal) enabled them to put together this album, aptly titled Reverie, because it has all the makings of a meditation on the beauty of the world, on the calm and almost yogic spirit induced by a blanket of snow on trees galore in a setting that seems withdrawn from the frenetic world.
The repetitive melodic motifs are as reminiscent of Pärt as they are of Eno. The soaring, contemplative atmospheres also evoke, at least if you’re familiar with it, James Newton Howard’s beautiful music for the film The Village. Add a delicate electro treatment that draws up an extensive panorama of the instruments involved (violin and cello, of course, but also piano, played by the two ladies) in reverberating effects that envelop the acoustic sounds in a dose of almost mystical fog.
Bewitching.
