On September 27th Leaf Music released a brand-new recording that features the keyboard music of celebrated Canadian composer Alice Ping Yee Ho.
Called Awake and Dreaming, the CD showcases the virtuosic playing of Canadian pianist Katherine Dowling, performing ten solo piano compositions by Ping Yee Ho. This is a marvelous recording that highlights not only Dowling’s endless virtuosity at the keyboard, but also Alice Ping Yee Ho’s beautiful exploration of melody, textures, and tonal colors that the piano is capable of.
Alice Ping Yee Ho is one of the most acclaimed composers writing music in Canada today. She has won numerous composition awards across the country including Symphony Nova Scotia’s Maria Anna Mozart Award, The Joanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize, and the Prince Edward Island Symphony Composers Competition. She has been nominated for two Juno Awards, in 2015 and 2018 and her music has been performed by such Orchestras as The Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestras, and by international Orchestras such as the Finnish Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic and Chinese National Symphony.
Pianist Katherine Dowling has been praised by the New York Times for her “crystalline performances, gestural expressiveness, and careful attention to color.” She was a multi-year Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Centre and has been a Britten-Pears Young Artist. She has been a Professor of Piano at the University of Regina and is Currently on Faculty at York University.
The idea of tackling Ping Yee Ho’s music as your first solo recording project is ambitious. It is a bit like climbing Everest before conquering Mount Logan in the Yukon. Ping Yee Ho’s music demands technical perfection at the keyboard while also requiring the pianist to have a perfect inner sense of the total colors she is asking for. Thankfully, Dowling is up to the task.
Her first experience performing Ping Yee Ho’s music was during the 2018 Eckhardt-Gramatté competition that is held every year at Brandon University. She was performing as an accompanist for violinist Amy Hillis who won the competition that year. The duo then toured the country performing. One of the pieces on the program was Ping Yee Ho’s piece Coeur à Coeur. As Dowling says, “This piece, it really captured my imagination as well as my excitement. It was very virtuosic. Her [musical] language really highlights the piano and exploits all the different sounds that it can make, but it also incredibly expressive.”
When the lockdown happened during Covid, Dowling took a deep dive into the sound world of Ping Yee Ho. She explored and practiced her solo piano music and thought that this project could be possible. With the project complete Dowling feels she has grown. “Now it feels like I gained more from that journey as an artist and a pianist... it [the project] seems very well worth it at this point,” says Dowling.
Awake and Dreaming explores a vast cross section of Ping Yee Ho’s solo piano output. The earliest piece titled Arc dates from 1985, and the most current piece called There is no Night without a Dawning dates from 2023 and was composed specifically for the disc.
In this repertoire that spans almost 40 years Dowling says that Ping Yee Ho’s musical language has grown and evolved. “Each tentacle of her creative life then [in the 80s] has only grown more tentacles now. One thing I really love and admire about Alce’s writing is that she seems to constantly have these new shoots of creative life. I really do feel like in all of her music not just her piano music there are always these new pathways of her creativity, and she is always exploring new sounds and sonorities.”
All these sounds and sonorities are communicated perfectly by Dowling. The music is at times meditative, hyper-energized and dramatic. Regardless of the emotions, Dowling always gets deeper into the music capturing the vast kaleidoscope of colors and textures.
This is a wonderful disc that is sure to engage and captivate listeners. It is also a very worthwhile compendium of music that highlights Alice Ping Yee Ho’s solo piano music while also displaying the pianistic prowess of Dowling.
Well worth a listen!