Caterina Schembri is a Dublin-based Italian-Columbian composer. Her debut album, Sea salt and turpentine, launched last week (14 November) with a concert by Ficino Ensemble at the Studio in the National Concert Hall. The album, performed in its entirety at the concert, is made up of five chamber pieces composed over the past two years, presented as a single work.

The opening notes of the album come courtesy of Ficino Ensemble’s artistic director Nathan Sherman on viola, a plaintive rising minor third, and a fall. These three notes form the basis of the first piece, Soft charcoal over moonstone, inspired by chiaroscuro and charcoal drawing. The music reveals itself as introspective and careful, belying a somewhat melancholy first impression, and emphasising an exploration of the many timbres of the viola.

There is a willow follows, its flowing harp ostinato growing organically out of the closing notes of the previous track. Written for voice, viola, clarinet and harp, this is a reflection on the death of Ophelia, setting an original text replete with flower imagery. The vocal part is performed by Michelle O’Rourke, who shapes the long phrases beautifully. O’Rourke is at the centre of the next track, I wake up in the night when I dream in black and white, supported by string quartet. The strings, over the first half, drift between consonance and dissonance, taking a more ambient role as the voice enters in the second half, drifting similarly between speech and melody.

The fourth track on the album, It was only half as far, is the longest, beginning with a bright, clear clarinet melody that shakes off the last of the darkness of the preceding track. The remaining instruments (string quartet and harp), awaken and join, at first tentatively, then playfully, with that same opening motif dancing in and out of the foreground. Later it becomes more settled and thoughtful. Throughout, the way in which the music transitions is impressive – in a way the whole piece is transition. It never feels rushed but it is always in a state of change.

The final track sees O’Rourke return with the string players of Ficino Ensemble, and a return to the more reflective mood of Soft charcoal over moonstone. Written for two voices, the album launch concert had Suzanne Savage singing the lower vocal line, but the hypnotic effect of O’Rourke’s voice layered over itself in the recording is striking, the identical timbre splitting and combining like a thought process. The closing moments of the album have O’Rourke’s voice floating high over Ailbhe McDonagh’s cello (the lowest note in the piece), an emotional climax on the words ‘I break’, before finishing – alone, but in two parts.

Each piece connecting
I’ve written before about the special attention paid by Ergodos to the album as a form, but it’s something I always appreciate in their releases. On my first listen to this CD, before I’d read about the works, I interpreted it as a single, continuous conception (and to an extent it is, though the five pieces function alone as well). There is a real sense of through-line, even of narrative, in the ordering of the tracks on this album, with each piece connecting to the others, and the whole set finding balance. The arrival of a bright major clarinet melody at the beginning of It was only half as far halfway through the album feels like dawn, and I think it’s no coincidence it followed a work about dreams.

The launch concert recreated this to an extent, requesting the audience to hold applause until after the complete performance, but the flow is at its best on the recording, where allowance doesn’t need to be made for a changing lineup of musicians. And the production on the album is pristine, without a single moment unclear.

Schembri’s voice is fairly new on the scene – this is her debut album, and her website lists works going back a little over a decade – but she’s already got a distinctive sound. It’s directly emotive and often sad, and there’s a sense of the influence of composers like Arvo Pärt in the willingness to linger in a state of sound, and of Sarah Kirkland-Snider, in the music’s intimacy and concealed intricacy. There’s a clear debt to minimalism, but rarely with the insistent pulse typical of that style, and with far more room to breathe and reflect. It’s never static; there’s always movement, whether it’s introducing new timbres in Soft charcoal over moonstone or the continuous evolution in It was only half as far, but it’s gentle, thoughtful, controlled. Rather, like a mind at rest, it’s still.

Sea salt and turpentine by Caterina Schembri is available from Bandcamp. Visit https://ergodos.bandcamp.com.

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