Cantata No. 1 An Island Seen and Felt
Jonathan Compton
Amica Records
★★★★
Jonathon Crompton is an Australian saxophonist/contemporary music composer who spent his formative years enjoying life on the Australian Surf Coast on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road. This recently released album was very much inspired by his fond memories of those years. It follows a 12-year residency in New York, where he undertook extensive post-graduate studies.
Crompton has set the music instrumentally and vocally in the 17th-century baroque era, to quite stunning effect. The inspiration for this unusual match-up came when, while studying for his PhD, he regularly attended Bach cantata performances at a neighbouring church.
The three movements of the cantata are performed by an ensemble of eight, which includes two sopranos and a string quartet, superbly interwoven by Crompton’s alto saxophone and the standout improvised playing of fellow Australian, guitarist James Wengrow. Crompton’s saxophone and Wengrow’s guitar are perhaps the 21st-century equivalents of the baroque oboe and lute.
Crompton was attracted to baroque composition as a means of expressing the spiritual recollections of his childhood: his passionate memories of Anglesea beach and the Tim Winton novels he read that more broadly exalted Australian landscapes. Each of the three movements represents a visit to that beach: ‘Arrival’ is followed by ‘At Play’ and, finally, ‘At Peace’.
The album has been released rather appropriately on the Amica label, founded by Melbourne pianist/composer Nat Barsch with the specific intention of catering to the genre-bending music of her colleagues.
Reviewed by Robert Vale