Tanya Ekanayaka is a pianist from Sri Lanka. She composes a great deal of music inspired by her native country. I’ve already spoken to you about one of her albums elsewhere on PanM360 (read my review of the album 18 Piano Sutras and 25 South Asian Pianisms HERE – in French only), and I did so with great appreciation. I reiterate the positive aspect of Ms Ekanayaka’s pianistic art manifested this time in this album inspired by 16 of the 100 or so small islands that surround the main island that makes up Sri Lanka on a world map.
Ekanayaka’s style is a mixture of written and improvised music. She assigns fairly short motifs (a few seconds) to each suggested element (in this case an island, unique in its kind with distinct fauna, flora and organic or mineral attributes), from which she then weaves a relatively spontaneous plot. At least, that’s what she did with many of the pieces on this album. Others have been worked on in this way years before, but the principle generally remains the same.
The result is nothing like Gabriela Montero, for example. Montero manipulates the present moment very well, inserting folkloric, baroque, romantic and other references. Ms Ekanayaka has her own style, which she respects throughout, without drawing on the Western classical repertoire, or at least not precisely. She is obviously well trained in the Western school, and we can hear it, but she has managed to construct a language that places her in a kind of extra-European neo-romanticism/impressionism/exoticism. It could have been written in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, but not quite. In any case, this is lyrical music, firmly rooted in consonant tonalism and coloured by abundant sprays of ornamentation. We may be reminded a little of Colin McPhee’s Balinese explorations. But only vaguely. I’m also thinking of the soaring flights of fancy of Ethiopian artist Girma Yifrashewa. Just a little.
In short, there’s something familiar and welcoming about Tanya Ekanayaka’s music, but a bit out of the frame also. Above all, it’s very beautiful, and despite its Sri Lankan origins, remains firmly planted in Western classical music. As I said in my review of the previous album, releasing this one under the Naxos World label rather than Naxos Classical seems to me to be superficial ethnicism, with no regard for the very nature of the music expressed. Well….
A highly seductive, sometimes bewitching plunge into a refined, skilful exoticism, and above all splendidly delicate piano playing.
