A lot more than just the 52nd parallel links Gaena da Sylva and Charlie Beresford across 3000 miles. They share a vision and a sense for the most delicate of grey in greys, the photographer from Quebec and the artist from Shropshire, who brings music to these shades of grey with his acoustic guitar and whispered singing voice. On their reunion after their ‘Winterreise’ ‘The Science of Snow’, da Sylva releases doves in the air and, alongside the wistful cello of Sonia Hammond, Carolyn Hume, Beresford’s partner in Fourth Page and Crystal Moth, feels for braille messages of sorrow from the piano. From the Castalia and Parva Springs string quartets, the St Woolos Players and the Brecknock Sinfonia, Hammond is tuned in to a sense for Schubert and Mahler, the emotional landscapes of Vaughan Williams and Hamish MacCunn, to ‘Tears of Gaia’ and ‘Reveries on a River Journey’, as well as with Troy Redfern to the firestorm over Dresden. When softly humming, she underpins what Beresford starts to sing in a fragile whisper, time seems to consist of dark, crumbling hours. A pun like ‘Feather War Cast’ gives the melancholy a sarcastic undertone, around which they play, Beresford in random Spanish like a pecking bird, Hume with dreamy welling cascades of notes, and Hammond with a resonant sadness and gossamer threads. ‘Then the Cloud Comes’, marked with shimmering guitar strings, increases its appeal with the gentle voice of Judie Tzuke, matching Beresford note for note like the grey on grey of 52nd parallel’s aesthetic. When the gloss of the cello contrasts with the gloom of Hume’s left hand, as in ‘The Heavy Branch’, that only deepens the twilight in which this muffled world is immersed. The tempo is always down, the voice never more than a breath or a whisper. A guitar sound both smooth and bubbling and polished piping cello strings show the finesse of this playing, as well as the strong empathy of Beresford and Hammond shared from the Radnor Improvisers. ‘As If All was Within’ is part of this intimacy, and Beresford seesaws between the strings, as the sadness compresses into a cloud of darkness. Erratic knocking sounds set the tone for ‘In the Dark Hours’, and Tzuke breathes on her face in the mirror against a string sound which moves in the depths like a will o’ the wisp in a ghostly near-permeability between the worlds in front of and behind the mirror. Gently quaking, swirling and warbling and in the darkest of piano tones, the session, the séance in Cwm Gwilym School House finally arrives at a resonant current, but deeply infused in the minor key.
