Temporary Super Offer!  We can only answer that question from an individual perspective, based upon our perception of place, and space, and time, and stimuli. Each of these categories exists within a complex of contexts – for example, there is the stimulus of personal relationships, the stimulus of our health and that of others around us, the stimulus of political events, the stimulus of work, the stimulus of art. A work of art provides an interactive opportunity to ignite our perception with the product of another’s creative concepts and activity. Here, as John Cage used to say, “The plot thickens.”

The music that has emerged from the duo of François Houle and Joe Sorbara comes to us from a remarkable vortex of unique experiences, memories, impulses, and techniques. Their past experiences can only be partially summarized. Houle has released dozens of recordings, collaborated with notable figures such as Marilyn Crispell, Evan Parker, Gerry Hemingway, Dave Douglas, and Myra Melford, examined the relationship of music and poetry with Catriona Strang, performed the music of Elliott Carter and Pierre Boulez, incorporated electronics into his instrumental palette, composed an alluring concerto for the clarinet, on which he has developed a virtuosic, ever-expanding technique. Sorbara has brought his vision of percussive sonorities to many Canadian ensembles that have explored various approaches to jazz, chamber music, and improvised settings, including essaying the music of Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, Jimmy Giuffre, and Sun Ra, he has taught at a number of universities and colleges, and previously worked with François Houle in a trio format, Alien Radio.

Experiences lead us to memories, but memories are not simply passive or regressive contemplations – after all, “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” as the White Queen said to Alice, in a wonderland – and can serve to energize experience into an eternal present. All of the music on Hush was improvised, stimulating the creative impulses of activity and aim. The notion of creative activity brings us to instrumental technique. The common view of technique is the ability to do something you already intend to do – but what if you use technique as a tool for discovery?

This is how we can identify with this music, as discovered in the moment – a sensation shared by the musicians and the listener. Each of the ten pieces exploits the tension between the presumptive authenticity of control (in actuality, only the common length of each piece was established in advance) and the drama of uncovering hidden dimensions of expression within the physicality and instinct of playing one’s instrument. As activity initiates sound, we may recognize pitch (or vague or unpitched sonorities), tonal qualities, colors, textures, intervals (linked into melodies of distinctive character), abstract shapes, conversations or coincidences. Accidents, or unexpected diversions, can occur, reconciled through reflexes; details intensified by the surprise of spontaneous counterpoint.

From piece to piece, Sorbara’s percussion offers a variety of orchestral implications – metallic sounds contrasting with the woody resonance of Houle’s clarinet tube in the dancing movement of “Parallelepiped,” brushes to compliment the clarinet breathing that colors the air in “Stool Pigeon,” the gamelan-like small bells and gongs accompanying the clarinet’s looping exotic lines on “What Next?,” the drum clatter including bowed and ringing cymbals agitating the clarinet’s distorted pitches, feints, and loops (evocative of a Chaucerian compleynt?) on “Unwreste,” and the addition of plucked piano strings and an ambient recording of crickets on the opening “Knocked Ambulations” (a pun on noctambulations, defined as sleepwalking) and closing “A Veil Drawn Over.”

Similarly, the etude-like breadth of Houle’s investigations into the clarinet’s potential as sound generator extend into microtones, pad percussives, circular breathing to stretch phrasing, taking apart the instrument to affect tone and pitch, growling, muttering, squawking vocalizations on “Montgolfière” (could the title be an ironic homage to the hot-air balloon brothers who flew in 1783?), tonal manipulations ranging from ripe, velvety fullness to flutey chirps and subtle, shadowy overtones – each action instigating the molecular DNA identifying the adventurous forms the music consequently inhabits. But “melody” is not abandoned. “Travelling By Foot” has an almost recognizable tune (the mind sometimes plays tricks) pushed to the brink, “Coded Whisper” could be compared to a Giuffresque folk line, “Stool Pigeon” morphs from measured breath to a melody chasing its own tail.

Still, it’s helpful to be reminded by Giuseppe Verdi that “Music is more than melody, rhythm, and harmony – it’s music.” It’s a distinction we accept on faith, trusting in our nature to locate that place within ourselves where the music’s spirit sings. Immersed in Hush, we find ourselves in a fluid, shifting environment where we may experience what the Objectivist poet George Oppen called “the lyric valuables.” Here we are again. - Art Lange, Chicago, March 2021