10/10
Hat Trick: Kristi Shade, harp; April Clayton, flute; and David Wallace, viola.
Bridge Records, 2024.
It may be a standard flute, viola, and harp trio on paper, but when Hat Trick plays, nothing feels ordinary. On their superb, Grammy-nominated new release, Big Sky, the trio of virtuosos—April Clayton, flute; David Wallace, viola; Kristi Shade, harp—offers an alluring program of eclectic works by contemporary composers.
The album opens with the world-premiere recording of Thea Musgrave’s haunting Sunrise, immediately showcasing the ensemble’s extraordinary command of color, mood, and emotion. Marked “rubato and seductive,” Clayton’s alto flute and Shade’s rumbling arpeggios set the tone, perfectly blended with the warm, velvety hue of Wallace’s viola. As the music expands into “svegliato”(awakening) it glows with the radiance of dawn. Written in 2010, this is a tantalizing gem that the ensemble—and I—hope inspires many more performances.
At the center of the album is a commissioned work by American composer Daniel Dorff. With Dorff’s characteristic Americana sense of hope and wide-open spaces, the two contrasting movements, “Montana Morning” and “Dancing Under the Stars,” unfold with a nearly cinematic sweep. Delayed by the pandemic, this splendid addition to the repertoire is especially welcome.
Art often mirrors life, and when Arnold Bax sought to honor the friends and neighbors he lost in Ireland’s violent Easter uprising, he created music that is both stirring and deeply life-affirming. Like the Dorff, the piece evokes a strong sense of place through its instrumentation, particularly the flute and harp, which have deep Irish roots, as well as through the suggestion of the surrounding sea. Hat Trick delivers the full emotional palette with striking sensitivity.
A perfect counterbalance follows in Jessica Meyer’s My Heart is the Churning Sea. Inspired by her experience watching massive waves whipped up by Hurricane Lee, the piece embodies the ocean’s power and unpredictability, complete with exhilarating technical acrobatics for all three musicians, executed with aplomb.
David Bruce’s 2010 multi-movement work The Eye of the Night draws on Aimee Bender’s short story describing the night sky as a vast, unblinking eye gazing down on the world. Its four tender nocturnes shift from mysterious to playful, with Clayton moving between alto and bass flutes to capture the story’s shifting moods and even echo the timbre of the Indian bansuri. Hat Trick absolutely sparkles.
The album closes with Angélica Négron’s gloriously grooving Drawings for Meyoko. Here the trio crumples paper, sings, interacts with atmospheric prerecorded samples, and even features Wallace on tenor banjo. In this piece inspired by illustrations from Ecuadorian artist Melissa Murillo, Hat Trick gives the uncanny sensation of watching those drawings take shape in real time.
Altogether, Hat Trick’s new album is stunning, an easy, unreserved “ten harps” from me.
