Contemporary composer Tim Brady’s daring explorations on Imagine Many Guitars expand the boundaries of choral guitars and stacked voices.
Thanks to Riparian Media ~ in current release through Redshift Records
Award-winning Montréal-based composer-guitarist Tim Brady has established himself as a singular and crucial figure in contemporary composition. Once hailed by Guitar Player as one of the 30 most important guitarists for the future of the instrument, his vast and varied oeuvre, which encompasses opera, orchestral and chamber pieces as well as various incarnations of his variable-size guitar ensemble Instruments of Happiness has been praised everywhere from Gramophone to the Wire and DownBeat Magazine to New York Times. Just last year, Seth Colter Walls enthused in the latter publication that “a solo guitar symphony might raise some eyebrows, but this 50-minute piece by Canadian composer-performer Tim Brady made me a believer.”
Even if your introduction to Brady’s work is his new release Imagine Many Guitars, it’s easy to understand how his work elicits applause from such a diverse array of sources. Its four constituent pieces traverse buoyant orchestral lushness to intimate solos and variously explore radiant euphony, meticulous melodic writing and outright textural abstraction primarily through superimposing his own guitar.
This one is broken in pieces: Symphony #11 (2019-2024) opens the disc, immediately bathing the listener in sumptuous choral guitars and stacked voices, the singers comprising the album’s only other performers. Its pedal-happy 25-minute scope evolves to embrace sonics that would be right at home amidst ambient gauziness, the dense atmospherics of shoegaze, or even metal at its most oceanic, all the while maintaining a harmonic and structural sensibility that anchors it in contemporary composition. Meanwhile the gorgeous swirls and pointillism of the voices are grounded by a text from the late Ian Ferrier taken from the book Coming And Going. The work is set to make its American debut in March 2025 courtesy of Baltimore/Boston vocal group the Lorelei Ensemble.
The title of the second piece, Slow, Simple –music for 20 electric guitars (2022) might frame it as a companion to Instruments of Happiness’ acclaimed album Slow, Quiet Music in Search of Electric Happiness released that same year. Indeed, it inhabits a similar world to the four collected works from various composers on that release. The first titular word is certainly apt; the piece unfurls a series of gradual transformations in colour. However, the sheer quantity of instruments ensures that these towering sonorities never feel simple, rather they teem constantly with minute flutters of actvity. The work made its debut in November 2022 at Chile’s Festival Internacional de la Guitarra Eléctrica Contemporanea.
The final two works of the album both employ smaller forces and shorter movements strung together. On Five Times: four guitars (2022), Brady skillfully layers and interleaves an assortment of approaches to the guitar from crisp, jazz-infected leads to the kaleidoscopic accompaniment. Its more intmate setng and concise duratons permit listeners to perceive these voices individually rather than as an element woven into a much larger tapestry. Meanwhile the closing [very] Short Pieces for (jazz) Guitar was Brady’s first chamber composition back in 1979, its accurate title betraying his roots as a player.
Imagine Many Guitars is a thoroughly engaging release, its telescoping making it clear that Brady’s cheeky title isn’t just a reference to the ensembles of multiple guitars that populate his compositions, it’s also an imperative to consider the vast array of guises that the guitar can assume.
Since 1988 Tim Brady has released 28 albums as both a composer and a performer on imprints such as Justin Time Records, Ambiances magnétques, Atma Classique, Starkland and Centrediscs. Brady has been commissioned and performed by numerous North American and European ensembles and orchestras including The Vancouver Symphony, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, INA-GRM (Radio-France), the English Guitar Quartet, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Esprit Orchestra, the Philadelphia-based Relâche ensemble, Australian group Topology, and the Smith Quartet (UK).
Last year, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal commissioned and premiered his second Violin Concerto, in a performance by OSM concertmaster Andrew Wan. Brady has also appeared at a number of major festivals and venues, including Festival Présence in Paris, The South Bank Centre in London, and the Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville. In 2020 his concerto for improvising piano and orchestra was premiered by Symphony Nova Scotia with pianist Tim Crofts. His ambitous 100-guitar spatalized music projects have been performed across Canada under the Instruments of Happiness banner including notable appearances at the 2018 Luminato Festival in Toronto, and last year’s Festival international de jazz de Montréal.
Next March, alongside his Instruments of Happiness he will unveil the colossal immersive work La Grande Accélération: Symphony #12 featuring 100 guitarists, six percussionists and two symphony orchestras within the architectural marvel of Montréal’s Oratoire St. Joseph.His album Atacama: Symphony #3, was named “Création de l’année” for 2012 at the Prix Opus and was also nominated for a JUNO in 2014.
