Games of the Night Wind
David Jaeger composer
Tōru Takemitsu composer
Alexandre Tansman composer
Henryk Górecki composer
Christina Petrowska Quilico piano
Described by the Oskar Morawetz Award jurors as a “legend” of Canadian musicians, Christina Petrowska Quilico joins lauded composer and champion of new music David Jaeger on GAMES OF THE NIGHT WIND, a dreamy musical landscape premiering 12 of Jaeger’s original nocturnes in addition to seven 20th century solo piano works.
Each nocturne invokes a different spirit of the night: deception, memory, redemption, realization, and many more, each brought to fruition by Petrowska Quilico’s evocative musicality. Sharp staccato and an increasingly startled momentum drives the image of an encounter with the shadows in Nocturne 11, The Alarm Bell, a weighty contrast to the deep rubato and heaving nostalgia in Nocturne 1, In Memory Of — yet both hail from the same thematic darkness that expands across the entirety of the album. These sensations are ever present in Tōru Takemitsu’s starry Les yeux clos, Alexandre Tansman’s complex and lyrical nocturnes, and two works by Górecki, whose Lullaby sings GAMES OF THE NIGHT WIND off to sleep.
GAMES OF THE NIGHT WIND plays to the unfettered wildness of the night, a force of nature encapsulated in every aspect of Petrowska Quilico and Jaeger’s musical and poetic collaboration, an elegant exploration for the night owl in us all.
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Track Listing & Credits
| # | Title | Composer | Performer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Les Yeux Clos | Tōru Takemitsu | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 7:26 |
| 02 | Nocturne No. 1 - In Memory Of | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 2:52 |
| 03 | Nocturne No. 2 - A Blessing | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 2:34 |
| 04 | Nocturne No. 3 - Tumult | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 2:29 |
| 05 | Nocturne No. 4 - The Murmur | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 4:48 |
| 06 | Nocturne No. 1 - Moderato | Alexandre Tansman | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 2:06 |
| 07 | Nocturne No. 2 - Moderato | Alexandre Tansman | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 1:53 |
| 08 | Nocturne No. 3 - Moderato | Alexandre Tansman | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 2:10 |
| 09 | Nocturne No. 4 - Lento | Alexandre Tansman | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 1:26 |
| 10 | Nocturne No. 5 - The Holes of Night | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 2:14 |
| 11 | Nocturne No. 6 - Forget the Day | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 3:21 |
| 12 | Nocturne No. 7 - The Red Deer | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 1:51 |
| 13 | Nocturne No. 8 - The House and You | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 1:57 |
| 14 | Intermezzo | Henryk Górecki | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 2:36 |
| 15 | Nocturne No. 9 - Lament for the People of Ukraine | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 2:37 |
| 16 | Nocturne No. 10 - Games of the Night Wind | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 4:09 |
| 17 | Nocturne No. 11 - The Alarm Bell | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 1:54 |
| 18 | Nocturne No. 12 - Conjure You | David Jaeger | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 6:17 |
| 19 | Lullaby (Kolysanka) | Henryk Górecki | Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano | 3:11 |
Recorded December 18, 2023 at Imagine Sound Studio in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Recording Session Producer David Jaeger
Recording Session Engineer Dennis Patterson
Editing & Mastering David Jaeger
Cover art by Christina Petrowska Quilico
Publicist, pianist’s bio, and general editing of program notes by Linda Litwack
Executive Producer Bob Lord
VP of A&R Brandon MacNeil
VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette
VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Chelsea Kornago
Artist Information
David Jaeger
David Jaeger is a music producer, composer, and broadcaster. Jaeger's compositions range from chamber music to vocal and choral works and opera, as well as orchestral and electronic music. His works for the piano form a large portion of his canon, most of it added since his retirement from CBC in 2013. Since that date, Jaeger has concentrated increasingly on compositions for solo instruments and voices, often based on literary texts. His Nocturnes, written between 2020 and 2023, are all based on poetry he compiled from several authors who he has collaborated with: David Cameron, Seán Haldane, Bruce Whiteman, and his pianist collaborator, Christina Petrowska Quilico.
Christina Petrowska Quilico
The Canadian Encyclopedia calls Christina Petrowska Quilico, C.M., OOnt, FRSC, “one of Canada’s most celebrated pianists. Equally adept at Classical, Romantic and Contemporary repertoires...she is also a noted champion of Canadian composers.” She was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2020 “for her celebrated career as a classical and contemporary pianist, and for championing Canadian music” and to the Order of Ontario in 2022 “for opening the ears of music lovers through her performances and recordings, her teaching at York University and her establishment of The Christina and Louis Quilico Award at the Ontario Arts Foundation and Canadian Opera Company.” She was also inducted in 2021 into the Royal Society of Canada, “the country’s highest honor an individual can achieve in the Arts, Social Sciences and Sciences.” In September 2023, the Ontario Arts Council named her winner of its Oskar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Performance for having “reached a degree of international attention through appearances in other countries, and/or through broadcast and recordings,” with the jury asserting, “She is a legend.”
Tōru Takemitsu
Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996) was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu is famed for crystalline compositions of his own Japanese traditions with the western modernism he loved so much and for fusing opposites together such as sound with silence and tradition with innovation. “Listening to my music can be compared with walking through a garden and experiencing the changes in light, pattern and texture.”
Alexandre Tansman
Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) was a Polish composer who followed several artistic principles: logic in form, simplicity and fluidity in style, and the use of rich lyrical elements without falling prey to excessive pathos or empty sentimentality. In a manner reminiscent of Chopin, Tansman combines the lyricism of Polish folk songs with complex harmonic structures.
Henryk Górecki
Henryk Górecki (1933-2010) was a Polish composer who composed in several distinct phases in his compositions, sharing similarities with Lutosławski, Serocki, and Penderecki. His first notable phase was that of Modernism, clearly influenced by Szymanowski, Webern, and Bartók. Górecki’s compositional techniques in the 1960s were often based on geometry, including axes, figures, one and two-dimensional patterns, and especially symmetry. During the mid-1960s and early 1970s, Górecki progressively moved away from his early career as radical modernist, and began to compose in a more traditional, romantic mode of expression.
Notes
The seeds of my 12 Nocturnes for solo piano began in 2019 when I met the Scottish poet David Cameron in person for the first time. I had set some of his beautiful, innately musical poems as songs, but when we met, we began to discuss the relationship between music and the spoken word. We decided to try collaborating on a series of pieces in which I would compose piano accompaniments to his recited poetry. Cameron selected several of his poems — which he described as dark — and the completed collaboration was then titled In a Darker Vein.
At some point during the work on the latter set of pieces, I suddenly had the notion that the piano parts I was writing to accompany Cameron’s words could easily evolve into separate pieces for piano solo by replacing the spoken word component with additional music. Given that I was working with poetry that was decidedly dark, I had the idea to make some of them into Nocturnes — music for a dark time. As I continued to write nocturnes this way, I began to show my scores to Christina Petrowska Quilico, who immediately responded to them with surprising enthusiasm. I found poetry from other authors also fit the theme and mood of the pieces. Petrowska Quilico herself, who has written poetry throughout her career, responded by creating nocturnal poems that fit the project perfectly. And I also chose poems by two friends, the late Seán Haldane and Bruce Whiteman.
— David Jaeger
These are the twelve pieces and their descriptions:
In Memory Of (Poetry by David Cameron) dwells on the memory of those dear to us that we have lost.
A Blessing (Poetry by David Cameron) addresses our connection with the spiritual world.
Tumult (Poetry by Bruce Whiteman) contrasts the noise made by crows with human expressions of love and endearment.
The Murmur (Poetry by Seán Haldane) is an expression of a cry from the deepest places in the heart.
The Holes of Night (Poetry by Christina Petrowska Quilico) describes the unique qualities of the night and how they affect our psyche.
Forget the Day (Poetry by Christina Petrowska Quilico) focuses on the allure of the realm of the night.
The Red Deer (Poetry by David Cameron) describes an epiphany provoked by an encounter in nature.
The House and You (Poetry by David Cameron) offers redemption from the dark, only to be broken by a deception.
Lament for the People of Ukraine is a response to the invasion of Ukraine, based on a melody composed much earlier, inspired by words of Bruce Whiteman.
Games of the Night Wind (Poetry by Christina Petrowska Quilico) depicts the wild, uncontrollable atmosphere of the nocturnal realm.
The Alarm Bell (Poetry by David Cameron) describes a febrile encounter with the shadow-self.
Conjure You (Poetry by David Cameron) is an evocation of the artist’s Muse.
