Rodney Sharman / Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa - Known And Unknown [Redshift Records]

Released via the Canadian Redshift Records imprint on March 22nd, 2k24 is "Known And Unknown", an almost 73 minutes spanning body of work in which Vancouver-based Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa interpretes and performs pieces written by long-standing composer Rodney Sharman in a series of twelve or eighteen solo piano performances - dependent on if one regards the "Opera Transcriptions (Book 3 / 2 / 1)" as single pieces or prefers to count their contextual sub-sets as individual compositions. No matter where the listener stands in this regard, what we're exposed to is the meeting of two artists who've closely worked with and supported each other over the course of more than 20+ years, a mutual understanding of both each individual approach, expressiveness and artistic vision, shared respect, probably friendship even, all coming together in this major werkschau, spanning a musical ark from tender and dreamy pieces to the hard hitting and rather expressive chords and intense Spoken Word episodes to be found in "Wounded" which therefore might be our favorite cut on this one probably followed by the equally dramatic and somewhat foreboding "Narcissus" whereas "The Garden" not only is highly dynamic, extremely detailed but also evokes echoes of echoes of memories of Spoken Word legends like Lydia Lunch for a reason just to name a few. Probably an album more suitable for fall and winter listening, yet one that dedicated fans of Contemporary Classical / Modern Classical music might want to add to their watch lists for a reason.

Album artwork on Instagram!