Project Earth: The Blue Chapter is the first in a projected series of CDs from the Iris Trio (Christine Carter – clarinet, Anna Petrovna – piano, Zoë Martin-Doike – viola) dealing with environmental issues.  This one blends music by Florian Hoefner with poems by Don McKay.  The longest piece on the CD is the multi-movement Bird Island Suite inspired by the bird life of nesting islands around Newfoundland but really dealing with broader issues of how we interact with and influence the natural world for good or ill.  Usually the latter.

It starts with a poem and smooth jazz inflected number called “Audience”; which is about the experience of listening.  It then takes us to sea cliffs in “Bird Island Cacophonic Choir” where it explores how we interpret a complex soundscape in words and a kind of jazz/minimalist fusion before taking us on a bird by bird tour of seabirds living, threatened and extinct; leach’s stormy petrel, the great auk, the northern penguin.  The poems are complex and evocative with disturbing images; an albatross choking on a plastic toothbrush, and sometimes slip into Newfoundland dialect.  The music is by turns busy/chattery and lyrical with some extended technique to express the more chaotic end of the bird spectrum.  The minimalism and the jazz elements are still very much there and there are hints of Messiaen.  I guess there were bound to be!  I found it really interesting and quite moving.

It’s followed by Chorus of Wishes; a two part work again blending poetry and music around the theme of “hope for a surviving, thriving natural world”.  The minimalism; suggestive of Reich and Glass, is very much to the fore here.  Finally there is the four part Kinds of Blue celebrating the blue in nature from the pesky, chattery Blue Jay to the gentler shades of the Iris to the mellowness of ripe berries.  Musically it’s by turns almost an elegy and something much more driven and busy.  And, of course, the influence of the Blues is felt here.

This is a fun album.  The poems are witty and moving and very well read by the poet.  The music is of a piece with them and it’s played with great skill.  Clearly the Iris Trio play together a lot as the teamwork is palpable.  The recording is quite vivid (I listened to hi-res digital) and it’s available as a Physical CD or digitally as MP3 or CD quality and 96kHz/24 bit FLAC.  There’s no digital booklet but there is useful descriptive material on the Centrediscs website.

ETA:  There is a digital booklet and it’s very informative and contains all McKay’s poems.  Currently it’s not showing as being available at distributors.  Hopefully, by the time you read this that will have been addressed.

Catalogue information: Centrediscs CMCCD33924