Mary and Henry Fougère with their River Bourgeois Family and Friends

A touching tribute to a fine fiddler

Sanctuary adds a little tension with new tracks on Refuge

By Stephen Pedersen / Arts Reporter REVIEW CORNER

Let's Never Say Farewell: Tara Lynne Touesnard - TLTCD04

Nearly 10 years after a car accident took the life of 21-year-old River Bourgeois fiddler Tara Lynne Touesnard on April 25, 1994, her family has issued a compilation CD of choice tracks from her three previously issued albums.

Touesnard was only 15 when she recorded Heritage in 1988, followed by Fiddle Fingers in 1990 and Bowing the Strings in '92. A fourth album was in preparation when she died.

Not only a memorial, Let's Never Say Farewell joins an annual Thanksgiving weekend memorial concert in River Bourgeois and the Tara Lynn Touesnard Memorial Award offered each July by the Maritime Fiddlers' Association to perpetuate her memory through providing financial support for student musicians to help develop their musical talents. All proceeds will be used to further this goal.

Even in a field so crowded with first-class talents, Tousenard's playing on Let's Never Say Farewell is extraordinary, unique. The CD opens with Ashokan Farewell, a beautiful lament which features Tousenard's full sweet tone and the even drawing of her bow.

She was, say the liner notes, the first to record this now popular tune, after hearing it in the background for the Civil War Series on TV.

The even richness of Tousenard's tone combines with her nimble finger technique and her sensitive respect for danceable tempos. Even on Orange Blossom Special, most often treated by fiddlers as a show-stopper played at breakneck speed, Touesnard plays for the feet.

There are two sets of waltzes, a set each of jigs and reels, and a set of clogs with hornpipe and reel. She plays the first of her two original tunes, a jig called My Mom, as well as the second and last, MacKinnon's March, written in 1994 and played on Let's Never Say Farewell by her sister Krista Touesnard.

A touching slow tune called For the Love of Tara is contributed by her brother-in-law, fiddler/songwriter Denis Lancot, and there is a tribute from her colleagues on the 1994 Cape Breton Revue, in rehearsal at the time of her death. Fred Lavery and Steven Gaetz wrote the CD title song which is sung by Richard Burke (lead vocal).

There is everything to admire about this CD, and only one thing to regret. It gives everyone a chance to reacquaint themselves with a major Nova Scotian musical talent.

CDs are available from Tena Touesnard 535-2373 in River Bourgeois, Violins and Fiddles in New Glasgow 755-2120, Liz Durning in Truro 897-2812 and Mingo Music Sales in Truro 895-7702, as well as in Antigonish, Carroll's Corner, Moncton and Fredericton.

Refuge: Sanctuary. (Also called Floating Senses) hanssler CLASSIC CD 98.451

Sometimes the music improvised by organist Peter Togni, bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly and cellist Christoph Both is hard to classify. It is fundamentally slow (soft organ pedal register) with efflorescent of figuration by Reilly and soothing, snail-pace counterpoint by Both.

But hanssler CLASSIC, the label who picked them up for international distribution, thinks they are New Age with all that implies of music that flows like syrup and tastes like sugar. Hence their title, Floating Senses, for this semi-new second CD.

Sanctuary's Reilly prefers their title, Refuge. Both appear on the CD but Floating Senses is what hits you in the eye.

Nonetheless, hanssler CLASSIC has access to European markets and since Sanctuary has toured Germany, Switzerland and Latvia as well as Canada, they have attracted an international following.

Refuge, which I also prefer, is not New Age, but that classification was easier to defend in the trio's first CD. Here they have remade versions of tracks 1 to 6, while tracks 7, 8 and 10 are new pieces.

It is these tracks, Passio, Vigil and Surrender which introduce a new quality of tension into the playing. Passio, while just as slow as the earlier Sanctuary style, shows more struggle, less repose and expresses a profounder melancholy. There is a strong sense of composition, which in music always implies motion toward a goal rather than the more static dwelling in the moment.

Vigil is a brooding meditation with the tension here between the restless agitation of the cello's string-crossing arpeggios and the longer view taken by the clarinet.

In Surrender, the organ asserts itself as though it had something on its mind and, with polite urgency, makes itself clear.

Coming from this perspective, the revisited pieces sound fresher as well, with a fainter trace of the monotony that always threatens this way of improvising.

Three tracks, Blue in Green and When I Fall In Love, with its intro, derive from the jazz repertoire, but are used as the plainchant foundations of most of the rest of the music on the CD. They are exactly copied from the 2001 CD.

The liner notes are in English, French, German and Spanish.

The River Bourgeois Community Hall was named in Tara Lynne's honour.  If someone has a photo of this or if there's something else we can add ... just let me know.  A music clip if one is available would be a suitable addition.