Above: ‘Open Horizons’ is a recording of the complete piano music to date by Keyna Wilkins, pictured.
So what happens when you are Keyna Wilkins – multi instrumentalist, cultural collaborator, busy teacher and composer and you need to choose a pianist to record your keyboard compositions to date? Linked to nature, JS Bach or outer space?
Who could present as an oeuvre so consistently the sequential moments of calm or frenzy, with an extemporised feel and an eclecticism that refuses to be confined by one genre classification.
Who could be chosen to convey the delicate, atypical watercolour wash that morphs momentarily into darker veneers of traditional portraiture, plus swoops into moody filigree that defies extends any gallery’s constrictive gilt frames.
Which local pianist other than Keyna herself could instinctively re-carve out the requisite directness of line and to reach out to the listener with appropriately graded nuance?
Who could colour Wilkins genre-bending penetrating melodies emerging from layered, diverse backdrops. Tunes in fragments and more extended contours which twist away from predictability with an integrity of earnest chic?
After one listening to the precision, flow and clarity of performance and narrative-realisation that is on offer from the recording Open Horizons, I was instantly craving a second chance to hear all these evocative pieces. I was instantly thankful for the choice of Dr Jeanell Carrigan AM to champion Wilkins’ compositional catalogue on this new release (on the Wirripang Media label).
In the age of streaming services, where single tracks are quickly accessed, an album like this one with impressive momentum encourages a good old sit down and listen from end to end.
Jeanell Carrigan, pianist, academic, adjudicator and strong advocate for getting Australian music performed and recording and presents the five individual brackets or sets with an expert, colourful attention to nuance, story, as well as programmatic reference.
The music for keyboard by Keyna Wilkins is always interesting, often dramatic and a challenge to play with an easy flow due to fragmentation of melody or gesturing. Reference to a huge range of styles closely juxtaposed and shifting backwards and forwards from Baroque to Jazz, are to be presented smoothly and clearly in a hugely layered, shifting texture. This is a texture which demands uncluttered evocation of atmosphere and environment to be vividly, instantly conveyed.
Such challenges in Wilkins’ recognisable, inimitable language are handled exquisitely in Carrigan’s penetrating showcase of piano catalogue to date. Many of Keyna Wilkins’ main concerns and passions as a pianist and composer are demonstrated in the admirable flow of these pieces.
Above: Dr Jeanell Carrigan AM, pianist on this recording of the complete works for piano by Keyna Wilkins.
Harmonic and thematic ingredients that shift quickly between baroque, classical, postmodern, jazz and other contemporary keyboard styles feature Keyna Wilkins’ output. Music that is effectively, effortlessly programmatic and packaged into sets (such as ‘Sky Pieces’ and ‘Reverie Collection’). The clean, cumulatively effective internal contrasts within pieces that make up each bracket are well delineated by the composer and presented in a brilliantly even progression by pianist Jeanell Carrigan.
Another signature feature of Wilkins voice is the creeping of dance music into the musical design. At times only fleeting, in other parts of the CD taking up a whole piece or movement (such as ‘Titan Tango’ from Reverie Collection). Star Dance, a stand-alone piece in this album of multi-movement works unfolds as a well-characterised romp, reflecting Wilkins’ ongoing fascination with space, celestial bodies, space sounds and searching music reaching beyond the earthly environments.
The depiction of earthly environments relating to sky, buildings or landscape featured in the majority of brackets are extended to the area of the rainforest. The ‘Rainforest Reverie Piano Sonata’ (2023) displays beautifully another common compositional style for this composer showcase. Soundscape recordings (such as birdlife and other sounds of nature) blend seamlessly as Jeanell Carrigan traces Wilkins’ unique, multidirectional piano gestures above the recorded backdrop.
Such nicely balanced moments also show the fine recording, mastering and editing work done by ACO Studios, Bob Scott and Elena Quaviva. All of Keyna Wilkins’ bright works with shift between dry and sustained pianism come to us with clear as a bell production and effective keyboard tone across any level of nuance or width of the texture.
All student and professional pianists have a special link to JS Bach. The preludes, preludes and fugues, inventions and partitas which are developmental fodder for so many are beautifully, progressively responded to in Wilkins’ 2020 work of six movements, the perhaps irreverent sounding set, So What Bach.
After hearing some of this set live in concerts and on selected tracks from streaming services, fans of Keyna’s improvisational prowess and extemporisation turned into permanent works will love the nestling of these six responses to Bach classics within the exquisite tone poems and caricatures in response to nature.
Jeanell Carrigan shifts virtuosically between the original Bach voice and Wilkin’s ‘so what’, eclectic elaborations here. The pianist gives a thorough and stunning reading of the extension of Bach. Carrigan presents the familiar Bach fragments then hurtles us into dialoguing with the feel of trance or jazz musics, with uneven and ecstatic sequences of sonic excursion.
As in all the other pictorial and atmospheric excellence performed on this album, Carrigan again in this neo-Bach sequenza answers Wilkins’ demands on the player with regards to shape and constant, sudden shifts in influence across the centuries of keyboard practice.
So what of the result here? It is a fine rendering of this salute to Bach. As with all the vistas leaping out at us gently from the other four works all now recorded, this album is a salute to Keyna Wilkins’ talent and skill in creating soundscapes- on acoustic piano and with recorded additions which we have heard and admired in Keyna Wilkins’ live performance. There are pieces her for all levels of piano performers to discover and admire.
A listen to any track in isolation will endear you to the communicative prowess of recorded performer and composer. A full listen to the album’s chronological swoop of this composer’s piano music will take you from our colourful earthly environs up to the moon and the stars and back.
And the listen will leave you wanting more. On repeat and newly composed in the future.
