Album: ‘Dialogues’ by Su-a Lee and friends
Korean-born cellist Su-a Lee has become something of a National Treasure in Scotland. Quite an achievement for one so young, and who didn’t even live here until 1993 when she graduated from prestigious Juilliard School in NY and joined the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
She remains with SCO to this day, while still constantly exploring, experimenting, pushing at musical boundaries. She is a core member of Edinburgh’s ultra-innovative group Mr McFall’s Chamber, called by The Scotsman newspaper “the jewel in Scotland’s musical crown”, where exquisite jazz, prog-rock, folk, classical, tango and more can share the same programme. She also casts her own networks way beyond, embracing new challenges all over the world, as player, composer, ambassador, student, teacher or therapist. Though her primary instrument is the cello she is also a dab hand with the musical saw.
A lot of her work has traditional leanings. Besides the SCO and Mr McFall’s, Su-a pops up on dozens of other people’s albums. Yet for someone who seems so up-for-it, where was the solo album so many friends and fans begged her to make? Up until now, she had always fought shy.
Curious, because Su-a does not come across as shy. Petite but larger-than-life, outgoing, engaging; her inter-personal skills are superb. And this is just why “solo” hasn’t called to her: she says it is the human interaction in music-making that truly energises her. Hence in 2020, when empty months of lock-down yawned ahead, her now husband, folk artist Hamish Napier, prevailed upon her to revisit the idea of crafting a personal album; but not with her hogging centre-stage with occasional backing musicians. He suggested the notion of sharing duets with peers who over the years have illuminated her career and personal life. This format was perfect. It resulted in fifteen two-way musical conversations: Dialogues.
Fund-raising began with a series of faintly manic videos on Korean cooking, while over lock-down and Zoom she contacted and brainstormed with: Phil Cunningham, Duncan Chisholm, Julie Fowlis, Maeve Gilchrist, Donald Grant, Natalie Haas, Carel Kraayenhof, Pekka Kuusisto, Hamish Napier, Karine Polwart, Jenna Reid, James Ross, Donald Shaw.
With these diverse interlocutors Su-a aims to showcase not the cellist so much as the cello: the expressive power and versatility of an instrument which is often misjudged as second-string, required to follow an orchestral score demurely without drawing attention. She points out that traditionally, cellists were always companion of first choice to Scottish folk fiddlers, and equally crucial to the performance. Here she explores and shows how the cello can forge such mature relationships with any instrument.
Reading the album’s accompanying booklet is highly recommended; not because you need to, but because the notes are so engaging. For each track Su-a introduces her collaborator, explaining their history together, and the chemistry around creating that track. Each of the 14 collaborators does likewise from their point of view. This glimpse into Su-a’s CV brings an added glow of significance to each number. The anecdotes also provide a historically interesting account of musicians finding new and different ways of working together during Covid lockdown.
Many of these partners need little introduction, others are less of a household name, but all are exquisite and prominent performers in their field. The first track is with Donald Shaw (of Capercaillie) on piano and harmonium. He had sketched and sent in compositional ideas, all of which Su-a loved. Rather than discard any, they created a suite: march, gavotte, reel and slow air, and were later able to hone them face-to-face (or facemask to facemask) when the first lock-down was easing. The introductory sections are among the more classical-sounding of this album, the music the wider public associate with Su-a in her SCO role. Piano and cello scamper joyfully side by side before the leisurely flirt of the gavotte; then swerve face-to-face, to lunge like fencers. Gradually this challenge resolves into languid contentment.
The second track is a milonga (a precursor to the tango) aptly named Oblivion. This swooning tune features Dutch tango-band leader Carel Kraayenhof, master of the soulful sound of the bandoneón, a dauntingly complex type of concertina which, despite its player having to cope with four different keyboard layouts at once, “became the central voice of tango music”. Kraayenhof learnt this milonga when invited to play in NY alongside its composer Astor Piazzola, the grand master of tango, and has here arranged it for himself and cello. The two instruments partner each-other wonderfully, the complex matrix of the solemn bandoneón providing a strong arm for the cello to lean, flex and sway upon.
Track three simply had to be. Way back in Montreal, Natalie Haas wrote ‘Waltzska for Su-a’ during an intensive study-week mentoring Su-a in the folk cello - though this waltz-cum-polka alludes more to Su-a’s classical roots. The twin cellos circle each other and join, plucking and bowing, fading and swelling, heady passages with one instrument holding a gritty assertive polka while the counterpoint seems to swoon overhead unfettered. This is a heady display of duo cello virtuosity.
In her remarks on ‘Mill o’ Tifty’s Annie’, Karine Polwart notes the reluctance that she, an intuitive singer uncomfortable with set scores, felt towards collaborating on music at second remove onscreen. But Su-a and she found a shared delight in the linguistic dimension: researching, interpreting and picking through different versions to fine-tune the lyrics to this ballad of callous misogyny. Karine recounts the tragedy of bonny Annie with chilling simplicity, free of histrionics and unadorned by any layer of harmonies. The cello listens with bated breath, supplying a simple progression of drones until gradually it starts to comment, between verses at first, with deep growls as the narrative darkens, then joining in, heightening the drama: not an accompaniment so much as atmospheric film score.
Caithness composer and pianist James Ross had his slow jig ‘Stroma’ lying around unused and neglected, in what Su-a calls his “composer’s treasure chest of unrecorded melodies and fragments”. It inspired her to wind some improvisations around it. In a form of organic impro-by-email she and James slow-jigged leisurely and enjoyably over months. The name of Caithness’ Isle of Stroma comes from the Nordic “island in the stream”, owing to the strong tides that bind it. Block chords from the piano lead in like steppingstones, resolving into eddies, surf and foam to delicately overlay the swell and undertow from the cello. I initially wrote that at times “the cello spirals you under like a whirlpool”; then judged it overly melodramatic. However I had scarcely deleted that when a web-page for Old Pulteney Stroma Liqueur popped up. It pointed out that north Stroma lies at the intersection of multiple currents and tidal streams, indeed creating an infamous whirlpool: “Swelkie”. Swelkie is the Norse sea-king’s great quern, lurking there fifteen fathoms deep, grinding the salt for the seas. A piece of music to dream to.
While ‘Stroma’ contrasts a full cello with lightly handled piano, Phil Cunningham’s ‘The Wedding’ marries it to the accordion, showcasing two instrumental voices closely matched in fullness of timbre. The arrangement plays on that match with seamless blending and to-and-fro, for a confident, tender expression of unity. This is no raucous wedding knees-up, but the stuff that binds. Cunningham proposed “dusting off” this early composition, he says, to honour “another lockdown event”: Su-a’s marriage proposal to her partner, musician Hamish Napier.
Just In time for the first lockdown in March 2020, Su-a had joined Hamish at his home in Strathspey. There, Hamish composed his two tunes for Pathways: first a rolling, snapping, confident strathspey, ‘The Speyside Way’, to console friends whose plans to walk that long-distance trail had been thwarted by Covid; second ‘The Deer Path’, celebrating what became his and Su-a’s favourite daily run. Hamish uses piano for backing, and chatters to the cello with layers of evocative harmonies on the wooden whistles. The transition from the loping strathspey to The Deer Path’s reel, springs into a sprint. At spanking pace flute and cello start to separate and compete, to arrive somewhat abruptly at the finish, with a glint of dry humour.
Fiddler Duncan Chisholm, in whose band Su-a has played for many years, brings an ancient Jacobite air for her to conjure with, ‘Prince Charlie’s Last View of Scotland’. Chisholm plays throughout with exquisitely sustained sorrow, a principal mourner. The cello tip-toes in at first, tactful, before gaining confidence to join and support the fiddle’s narrative. At the end it returns to earth, or remains on dry land, as the fiddler withdraws and fades into the distance. A piece of classic perfection.
In summer of 2020, “strathspey queen” Patsy Reid (ex-Breabach) and Su-a started off developing a single trad strathspey for fiddle and cello, enjoying the process so much they ended up with two strathspeys and two reels to boot, yielding ‘Dance Tunes of Athole’. They start with the first strathspey, each introducing themselves before processing clearly in step; in the next the partners take up more distinct roles in the dance; with the reels they start to diverge, challenging, setting to each other more intently; the last reel ramps it right up: the strings get wilder, more wilful, almost pirouetting, shades of tarantella.
In 2015 ‘Mo Run Geal Og’ became the first song that Su-a performed together with Julie Fowlis (and Duncan Chisholm). With this lament, Christine Fergusson mourned another Chisholm, her young husband William, fallen at Culloden. The song provides a further connection for Su-a giving her the chance to use the string arrangement by her band leader Robert McFall. Sustained or slow chords provide a safe haven, punctuated with more perilous moments of tremolo. Where the cello sings a verse on its own it is with an ancient sorrow, a wonderful complement to Julie’s innocent bewilderment at the pointless sacrifice of this fine youth, whom she loved and still clearly desires. The production layers voice, harmonies and cello as if to say this widow knows she is only one among too many throughout the ages.
When Covid restrictions eased enough to unlock the studio, first to partner Su-a was star classical violinist Pekka Kuusisto. Kuusisto also loves folk and brings us Finnish waltz-tune ‘Lundgren’. They had no chance to rehearse before entering the studio so the resulting dialogue is largely improvised, with all the extra buzz that so often brings. The waltz is capricious and carefree, even joyous. Cello and fiddle duck, dive and tease like newfound kindred spirits.
Next to enter the studio was NY-based harpist Maeve Gilchrist, visiting Edinburgh post-lockdown to see her family. In contrast to Kuusisto’s ‘Lundgren’, their Irish ‘Loftus Jones’ collaboration had already been meticulously worked out by email, backed by Su-a’s first explorations of digital notation and recording. Finally meeting up in person instantly brought their correspondence to life. The result is a happy, relaxed flirtation between two masterful instrumentalists. A brief moment of sadness towards the end is almost disappointing––we hope they are only sad that their play is ending––but all resolves again to end in gladness.
Shetland fiddler Jenna Reid had no hesitation in choosing her teacher Tom Andersen’s ‘Mareel’ – a phosphorescence seen on sea – as her vehicle for showcasing cello alongside fiddle. A simple, lovely tune, its recurring repetitions allow the two instruments to explore and exchange roles, which they do, to their hearts’ content, and to ours. Reid first showed it to Su-a in a voice-memo one night after her children, not to mention Su-a, were all in bed. I wonder if this collaboration continued on an after-bedtime schedule, along with the other partnerships across time-meridians East and West.
Over the years Fiddler and Gaelic singer Donald Grant had often rewritten his gorgeously atmospheric ‘The Witch of Leannanchan’, and relished reworking it anew with Su-a. She learnt the tune by ear and they describe an exceptionally fruitful time fiddling, in both senses, with antepenultimate versions right up to the final laying down of bows in the studio. This instrumental piece slows down completely at the end, with a chant in Gaelic by Donald. With live audiences, Donald likes to have them join along with him on this. For Dialogues, the obliging audience is provided by the other 13 album collaborators, who recorded and sent in their vocals for Su-a and co-producer Andrea Gobbi to mix into a peaceful, contented chorus for this penultimate track.
The last tune is, at first glance, a solo: a stunning, sophisticated arrangement of two stanzas from the music to Burns’ ‘Ae Fond Kiss’. When Su-a played it live at the end of a launch party, people were moved to tears. Was that brought about by the deep familiarity of the song; the culmination of a stirring evening with wine; the raw vulnerability of the isolated performer; or something even less tangible?
For in a sense this solo is also a dialogue, with the departed. Su-a credits fellow-SCO cellists Kevin McCrae and Neil Johnstone with first introducing her to Scottish folk music. Sadly, McCrae died in 2005. The lovely arrangement she plays here was his legacy.