Voda, by Sarah Pagé

Voda

by Sarah Pagé

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Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$15 CAD or more
Poster/Print
9 original works of art created by artist Elena Miroshnichenko (mirelena.com), one for each track on the album, plus prints of the front/back covers and poem by Rousalka.

High quality prints, 8x11 in size, un-bound so they can be framed individually.

The collection will be packaged in a reusable cloth bag, printed by hand with a stamp made by Elena as well.

ships out within 3 days

edition of 250

$25 CAD or more

1.	Vers les Abîmes 09:17		buy track
2.	Rousalka 07:12		buy track
3.	Corps Balloté 06:49		buy track
4.	Méduses 07:02	info	buy track
5.	Premiers pas au Marécage 06:36	info	buy track
6.	Toska 04:40		buy track
7.	Benya 04:35		buy track
8.	Danse des Serpents 06:06		buy track
9.	Lac du Coeur/Tsarevna Lebed' 07:52		buy track

about

The latest album from Montréal’s exploratory harpist Sarah Pagé is a dynamic journey that drifts the listener through tangled knots and flowing eddies. Comprising nine long-form movements, Voda gathers, grows and throws off tensions, revealing murky depths and phenomenal tenderness. Where her last album, Dose Curves, was rooted firmly in the harp, Voda’s scope is much wider: instruments populating the pieces include bass, cello, violin, koto, electronics, oak branches, water bowls and waterphone.

The genesis of the pieces included on Voda (a Russian word meaning ‘water’) date back to 2014 when Pagé was invited to collaborate on a contemporary dance piece by Russian/Ukranian choreographer Nika Stein. In Voda-Eau-Water, Stein and company explore themes of mortality and vitality as they are typified by humankind’s relationship to water. These conjoined realities are told through symbols drawn from Russian myth and poetry: a peasant woman washing her clothes in a river, an immortal water nymph encountering the concept of death; a dripping wet cave, a spa, a swamp, the abyss. Developing and mounting the piece was an incredibly fruitful experience for Pagé, and so the pandemic found her revisiting the work.

Over the course of a calendar year, Pagé dissected, experimented, scored and expanded the original pieces that accompanied the performance. Working in collaboration with a trusted circle of players and technicians at her home studio outside Morin-Heights (including Stein who contributes the album's lone vocals), bits of myth and bodies of water were transmuted into sound, creating a standalone album of great breadth and intensity. Following instincts that both harkened back to and pushed beyond the original material, Pagé employed an array of techniques to go deeper into the concepts of the work. For instance, several of the bed tracks were processed through a large piece of sheet metal that was mic’d and dipped in and out of a basin of water. And that intensive process created but one subtle colour amidst the vivid soundworld that is Voda.

A central text that inspired the album (and the dance piece that preceded it) is a poem by 19th century Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov entitled ‘The Mermaid’. The English translation by Vladimir Nabokov includes a line that seems to capture the power and dynamism of the music of Voda: “Both making noise and whirling, the river rocked / the clouds reflected in her”.

credits

released June 2, 2023

Produced by Sarah Pagé at Aeolus Studio.
Engineered by Sarah Pagé and Vid Cousins at Aeolus Studio
Mixed by Pietro Amato at SkyBarn.
Additional mixing by Sarah Pagé at Aeolus Studio and Vid Cousins at Monkey Puzzle Studio.
Mastered by Harris Newman at Greymarket Mastering.
Artwork by Elena Miroshnichenko.
Graphic Design by Julie Papier, Justin Karas and Peter Pagé.
Texts by Andrew Patterson.
Sarah Pagé: harp, koto, dulcimer, electronics
Kate Bevan-Baker: violin (tracks 1, 8 and 9)
Vid Cousins; metal sheet and water bowls (tracks 6 and 9)
Jonah Fortune; double bass (tracks 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 9)
Patrick Graham; percussion, electronics and waterphone (tracks 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7)
Ugarte Kopanski; electronics (tracks 1, 3, 6, 7 and 8)
Robbie Kuster; drums and water bowls (tracks 2 and 8)
Shawn Mativetsky; tabla (track 8)
Vera Ronkos; cello (tracks 1, 3 and 4)
Nika Stein; vocals (tracks 2 and 7)

license

some rights reserved

about

Sarah Pagé Montreal, Québec

To encapsulate the career of Montreal-based harpist Sarah Pagé, one would have to draw long, constellation-like shapes across genres, borders and histories. While perhaps best known as a founding and longtime member of roots rockers The Barr Brothers, a brief consideration of her resume reveals the fact that she’s equally at home within traditions as without them. ... more

sarahpageharp.com

shows

Apr 24

Phi Centre

Montreal, QC
Apr 25

National Arts Centre - Fourth Stage

Ottawa, ON

discography

Voda

Jun 2023
Code Versus

Feb 2022
Dose Curves

Oct 2019

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