The Piano Music of Gayle Young

Xenia Pestova Bennett presents a triptych of piano works by the radical Canadian composer and instrument maker Gayle Young. In "Forest Ephemerals" and “As Trees Grow”, the pianist engages with unspoken text describing edible flowers in Ontario, Canada and trees in Umbria, Italy. "Ice Creek" explores a frozen waterfall in Canada recorded through resonant tubes of different lengths and pitch fields based on Debussy’s harmonic language. This unusual technique creates striking and aurally beguiling effects, amplifying different harmonic resonances and drawing the listener into the sounds and inviting engagement with the environment and human impact on nature. The piano inhabits and weaves a unique path through the soundscape, guiding the listener. 

Gayle Young is a Canadian music artist, involved in composition and sound installation. Her first years as composer and pianist specialising in new music were followed by explorations in mictotonal tunings.  She designed and built two instruments and developed notational systems for them. Her music now includes a wide variety of sound sources, from electronic and orchestral instruments to found objects such as stone, wood, and recordings of highways, railways and waterways made through tuned tubing, thereby imparting pitch to noise. Young authored the biography of Hugh Le Caine (1914-1977), the foremost Canadian inventor of electronic instruments. She has worked with Pauline Oliveros, R. Murray Schafer, Michael Snow, James Tenney, Don Wherry and many others prominent names in contemporary new music.