Linda Catlin Smith - Dirt Road (2016)

"An extraordinary journey for violin and percussion, stretching across 15 movements and over 68 minutes. Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith is one of the best-kept secrets of experimental music, and 'Dirt Road' is one of her few concert-length pieces. Brian Olewnick writes "this striking, gorgeous album from Linda Catlin Smith is wonderfully played by Mira Benjamin (violin) and Simon Limbrick (percussion)....definitely check it out."-Another Timbre

"Linda Catlin Smith, a native New Yorker long resident in Toronto, writes music that is gentle, gradual and generally austere. On the cover of her latest release is a photograph of a Dirt Road, taken by Smith herself. A simple two-lane track, etched into the earth through repeated use and wheel-friction stretches to a bend, then disappears behind trees.

The music, a sequence of 15 episodes ranging in length from two and a half minutes to ten, has a lonesome kind of beauty. The contrasting instrumental voices of percussionist Simon Limbrick and violinist Mira Benjamin become subtly complementary as they meet on a shared path of frail continuities and slow metallic pulsing, wistful melodies and dull, trundling thuds.

Smith is a sharp observer of what William Carlos Williams identified as "imaginative qualities of actual things". When physical realities are addressed in her music they are invariably filtered through memory or anticipation, yearning or daydreams. On her previous CD, indicitavely entitled 'Thought and Desire', Smith's setting of a Shakespeare sonnet is performed with real sensitivity by pianist Eve Egoyan. That music artfully matches the poem's portrayal of two bodies caught within a web of supposition, as anxiety and consolation fluctuate within a love affair.

The title 'Dirt Road' might seem to call for music that is far more matter of fact, roughly textured and minimally linear, but its episodic structure and mobile alignments of violin and percussion actually suggest elusive states of mind rather than locatable stages on a familiar journey.

Smith is again involved with perceptions that are as volatile as the play of light, as ephemeral as a momentary distraction or fleeting recollection. Ambivalence resonates through the fabric of her music, making it haunting and special." -Julian Cowley, The Wire.