Notes from the Living Room

Still, W G: Three Songs (Arr. for Flute and Guitar by James Girling); Dominique Le Gendre: Songs and Dances of the Islands, Suite No. 2 (Arr. for Flute and Guitar by James Girling); Alberga: Animal Banter*; Messiaen: Cinq leçons de solfège (Arr. for Flute and Guitar by James Girling); Takemitsu: Toward the Sea (1981 Version for Alto Flute and Guitar); Tadic: Four Macedonian Pieces for Alto Flute and Guitar

Meraki Duo
Meera Maharaj (flute), James Girling (guitar), with Roberto Carrillo García (double bass)*
Delphian, DCD34356
https://www.delphianrecords.com/

There are worse places to sit with a new recording than a terrace above Cascais, the Atlantic gleaming below, a lighthouse standing sentinel over the fishing boats and the marina traffic beneath it. I had gone there for the view. It was the music, in the end, that did the travelling — from Kingston to Port of Spain, Tokyo to Skopje, Paris to small-town America, all before the lighthouse had finished its next sweep.

That, in essence, is the trick Meraki Duo pull off. Flautist Meera Maharaj and guitarist James Girling built this programme out of curiosity and connection and a shared conviction that music can talk across borders more easily than people generally manage to. Flute and guitar make an unusually intimate pairing at the best of times — warm, versatile, forever finishing each other's phrases — and here that conversation ranges freely between classical, folk, jazz and global tradition, taking in music from Jamaica, Trinidad, Japan, Macedonia, France, Britain and the USA along the way. Alongside pieces written expressly for the duo sit Girling's own arrangements, which uncover fresh colour in William Grant Still, Olivier Messiaen and Dominique Le Gendre; the alto flute, when it appears, adds a further layer of warmth to an already generous palette. On Eleanor Alberga's Animal Banter the pair are joined by double bassist Roberto Carrillo García — of which more shortly.

Toward the Sea felt written for the moment, Maharaj's lower register turning genuinely atmospheric against Girling's guitar, the two instruments trading light and shade with real conviction. Maharaj's technique throughout is never in doubt.

Messiaen's Cinq leçons de solfège brings an altogether more exotic air, and Lucy Walker's booklet notes get to the heart of why: Messiaen's music, she observes, is "commonly characterised by rich, clustered chords, complex rhythmic patterns, [and] an atmosphere ranging from mesmeric to ecstatic." Time seems to stand still and hurtle forward simultaneously — an odd trick for five minutes of music to manage, but this account pulls it off.

Eleanor Alberga's Animal Banter deserves a paragraph of its own, and not simply because the title turns out to undersell it rather than the reverse, for once. The chords stay simple almost throughout — Alberga saves her one real harmonic jolt for the final minute — so it falls to the metre to cause the trouble: bars of five give way to eleven, twelve, thirteen, then a lopsided seven that splits into fourteen half-beats, as though the three players cannot agree how long anything should last. Each "animal" has its own calling-card phrase — the flute keeps circling back to a rising E flat–F figure — and those phrases grow more elaborate and unruly as the argument develops, Maharaj's high, skittering flute writing towards the close especially thrilling. Only in the last bar do the three finally agree on anything. This is also the first time the piece has been recorded in this original trio scoring; an earlier recording, more familiar from concert programmes, used flute, piano and cello instead.

Best of all are the Four Macedonian Pieces, two songs and two dances from the former Yugoslav region. The first opens with Maharaj entirely alone before Girling's guitar slips in, exquisitely judged; the second reverses the order, guitar first, flute arriving after. The closing Gajdarsko oro (Bagpiper's Dance) has a rhythmic pulse so infectious that even an organist more used to counting in four than dancing in seven found a foot tapping.

Who would have thought flute and guitar could carry a musical atlas this wide, and still sound like two friends talking quietly in the next room? The album is called Notes from the Living Room, and by the closing bars you understand exactly why: this is chamber music at its most direct, closing the distance between one living room and another, whether the ocean outside is the Atlantic off Cascais or something considerably greyer at home. Lighthouses exist to warn sailors off the rocks. This captivating disc does rather the opposite — it invites you onto them, and you go gladly.