Sarah Davachi – Two Sisters

The 2022 album from Sarah Davachi on her own Late Music imprint is a collection of nine extended compositions for chamber ensemble and solo pipe organ. The expanded instrumentation on this album includes carillon (a keyboard instrument comprised of very large cast-iron bells), choir, string quartet, low woodwinds, and trombone quartet, alongside sine tones and electronic drones. Conceptually, there is a loose thread that runs through the compositional methods of ‘Two Sisters’, influenced by the allegory of ‘temperance’ in a minimalist aesthetic sense: ‘one foot on land, one foot in the water’, as it were, caught in the perpetual balance of restraint as delight and necessity. There are mirrored sonic and structural images throughout the album, also reflected in the iconography of the cover: the satyr and the subject, the shared gaze between head and body, the dialogue between cerebral and physical response, as above so below. It’s like there’s two sisters of faith and chance.

Disc 1
1. Hall of Mirrors – Sarah Davachi
2. Alas, Departing – Sarah Davachi
3. Vanity of Ages – Sarah Davachi
4. Icon Studies I – Sarah Davachi
5. Harmonies in Bronze – Sarah Davachi
Disc 2
1. Harmonies in Green – Sarah Davachi
2. Icon Studies II – Sarah Davachi
3. En Bas Tu Vois – Sarah Davachi
4. O World and the Clear Song – Sarah Davachi