Su-a Lee
Dialogues
Sky Child Records
2 December 2022
Stepping out of the shadows and making your debut album after a 30-year career as a member of different ensembles and an assortment of collaborations with others is a courageous move, but Scotland-based cellist Su-a Lee can rest assured that with Dialogues, she has made an album that is, in every sense, an unqualified triumph. You can’t listen and not be enveloped and stirred by the magnificently played assemblage of musical partnerships on offer.
Born in Seoul, Su-a Lee (and her sisters) went to Chethams School of Music, Manchester, from the age of 9, later studied at Juilliard, New York City, is a long-term resident of Scotland, and has worked extensively in the classical and folk music scene, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and as a founding member of Mr McFall’s Chamber, as well as collaborating with rock, jazz and Indian musicians. On Dialogues, Su-a showcases the influence and inspirations of her non-classical career, primarily Scottish folk music, with, in addition, a Finnish fiddle tune and compositions by Astor Piazzolla and O’Carolan.
Dialogues is a series of 15 duos with Su-a’s favourite folk musicians from home and abroad – fiddle players Donald Grant, Duncan Chisholm, Jenna Reid, Patsy Reid and Pekka Kuusisto; pianists Donald Shaw and James Ross; flautist Hamish Napier; harper Maeve Gilchrist; bandoneonist Carel Kraayenhof; accordionist Phil Cunningham; Scots singer songwriter Karine Polwart; Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis; and fellow cellist Natalie Haas. It’s really 14 duos, as the last track is a solo recording of Ae Fond Kiss arranged by her late friend and colleague in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra cello section, Kevin McCrae, who originally sparked Su-a’s interest in folk music. The album spans a full hour and a quarter, and the fifteen tracks are grouped into three theatre acts – Act 1 – The Setup, The Ootset, An Stèidheachadh | Act 2 – The Development, The Oncome, An Leasachadh and Act 3 – The Resolution, The Greeance, An Rèiteachadh.
Su-a Lee explained her approach and choices this way:
“Playing solo is not really my thing. I am energised by working with other people, especially these people. I didn’t want my debut solo album to be about me taking the limelight. This album celebrates the musician featured on each track. Each piece reveals something of their roots, identity and inspirations, while also striking a chord with me.”
Baroque Suite, the opening track, is a glorious ramble around a set of four tunes – march, gavotte, reel and slow air. Donald Shaw (Capercaillie and Celtic Connections Creative Director) is the other half of the duo and the composer, playing piano and harmonium. The reciprocal way in which the cello and piano combine in playing these appealing tunes is immediately striking, as is the fitting contrast between Su-a’s at times full, urgent playing on the first three tunes with her serene playing on the slow air. You can’t help but hear these tunes visually – they are like one of those postcards with four different views – Donald shares in the booklet that each piece is inspired by a place, the slow air, Ocean Poem, “a name for that magical ‘whispering’ sound that the sea makes at night after a storm”. Su-a says that Donald was an obvious choice and that when he presented her with “some ‘sketches’ of tune ideas”, each “was so captivating” that instead of choosing one, she “came up with the idea of making a suite out of all of them”. That pleased the composer: “I love that Su-a found a way to thread all the pieces together”.
That dialogue, with a small ’d’, is taken from the sumptuous booklet with the CD. Besides the conversational pieces between Su-a and her duo partners, discussing their musical relationship and inspirations for and the making of each chosen piece, there are gorgeous photos by Elly Lucas of Su-a by the seashore and in the studio. If you want to know the background – it’s all here; I’m nominating the booklet now for Best Album Notes in next year’s Grammy’s.
The fiddle is the predominant ‘other instrument’ on this release, perhaps unsurprising on an album of primarily Scottish folk music. Su-a and fiddle player Duncan Chisholm – in Su-a’s words, “a true master of breath-taking Scottish slow airs” – have played together many times, and here they share the slow air, Prince Charlie’s Last View of Scotland. The tune comes from the period of the Jacobite uprisings in the Scottish Highlands in the first half of the 18th century. Duncan says: “It is a haunting and complex melody which draws out huge emotion. Obviously written by a Jacobite, it seems to me to be a very personal expression of grief from the composer, whoever they were?”. At first, the cello is subtly understated, picking out notes intermittently behind Duncan’s evocative fiddle playing, but then Su-a returns to bowing, weaving around and finally taking up the melody; it is a stunningly beautiful piece of music.
Mareel, a Tom Anderson tune chosen by and featuring Jenna Reid on fiddle, provides similar opportunities with enchanting results. Jenna says she immediately thought of the tune, seeing it as “enabling us to move around the tune and find passages of harmony…whilst supporting the melody. The recurring patterns in the melody are almost tide-like; returning again and again.” Su-a recounts how moved she was on first hearing Jenna’s playing of it (on voicemail): “I had tears running down my cheeks from the sheer beauty of it”.
Su-a Lee intentionally sets out to explore the role of the cello in folk music. “The cello is the original Scottish folk rhythm section instrument, long before guitars, pianos and drumkits came on the scene. The leading fiddle players of their day, Neil Gow, Peter Milne, and James Scott Skinner all had cellists that toured with them. After going out of fashion for many decades, the cello is undergoing a revival, particularly through influential mavericks such as Natalie Haas, who appears on this album.” Natalie has been playing in a duo with Scottish fiddler Alastair Fraser for twenty years. She wrote their track, Waltzska for Su-a (literally combining a waltz and a polka) some years previously when Su-a spent a week with Natalie studying folk cello. Natalie says the choice of key, C minor, was obvious “as the darkest and richest of all keys”. If one cello can be ‘rich and dark’ by itself, two cellos make for a wonderfully deep, brooding sound, bringing an edginess to tunes that on other instruments would likely sound much lighter.
On the two vocal tracks on the album Mill O’ Tifty’s Annie with Karine Polwart and Mo Rùn Geal Òg, a Gaelic lament with Julie Fowlis, Su-a provides a subtle underpinning for the vocal – you already know how good the singing is going to be – complementing Karine’s gentle guitar perfectly, and, in between, adding sweeping light and shade that feels like a vital illumination to the story being told in both songs – whether sung in English or Gaelic. Julie’s articulation of Su-a’s playing stands as an appropriate testimony for both tracks: “I just love how Su-a captures the emotion of the lyrics in her playing and journeys it on to a new place.”
The Wedding, which features the legendary accordionist Phil Cunningham, is an exquisite slow air composed by Phil from his 1987 album The Palomino Waltz. The tune is given a new lease of life, now sounding like it was always made to showcase Su-a’s cello alongside Phil’s accordion. It has personal significance for Su-a, who proposed to her now husband, Hamish Napier (who does get a track in the album) in 2020.
There are many fascinating insights (in the booklet) into the creative process – begun remotely during lockdown and completed in the studio in person. There is a strong sense of just how much all involved enjoyed the process and how working on the album in pairs built on and extended existing musical friendships. Su-a Lee describes the back and forth well when talking about Stroma, a track with pianist James Ross: “I extemporised on James’s beautiful slow jig. For the central section I sent him a few strands of improvised melodies, which James wove into the form you hear now. It all felt like such an organic process.” Finnish fiddle player Pekka Kuusisto – their track is a Lungren, a traditional Finish waltz – tells of a necessarily unplanned approach: “Since we didn’t have a chance to have a rehearsal, the session was an ‘in the moment’ arrangement and mostly improvised. I really love conversational vibe.” Su-a Lee shares the delight of the transition from initially sharing ideas remotely to playing in the same space with harpist Maeve Gilchrist on Loftus Jones, composed by O’Carolan: “When we met in person to rehearse it was one of the most exciting times for me. All those challenging hours in front of computer screens were all-at-once transformed into real, human interaction and soulful musical expression.”
Dialogues heralds the emergence into the limelight of a very talented musician. The variety of instruments and tunes/songs the duettists bring to the party make for a rich panoply of delights. That said, it is Su-a Lee’s expressive, intuitive cello playing throughout that gives the album its deep sense of continuity. Her inventive approach in these multiple settings adds deeply contrasting, evocative layers to the soundscape. Whilst Dialogues locates the cello in a series of folk music contexts, Su-a Lee brings with her, unsurprisingly, a measure of classical sensibility, which undoubtedly adds to the richness of the final offering. You won’t hear a more rewarding album in a long time.
Dialogues will be available to buy on CD, download and stream from Bandcamp Friday, 2nd December 2022. It will be available to stream and download from all other streaming platforms from Friday, 20th January 2023.