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recordings

VANISHING

IN THIS BODY

CURIO BOX

DIVE

Vanishing

CONCEIVED + PERFORMED BY Fides Krucker & Tim Motzer

Vanishing is the transcendent, cinematic, and utterly beguiling debut album from Toronto avant-garde vocalist Fides Krucker and guitarist Tim Motzer. This duo first improvised together in Toronto in 2017 at the Theatre Centre; seven months later they created an album’s worth of material in Philadelphia. The six pieces on Vanishing come off as a book of short stories—vocal stories—conjured through the deeply connected musical conversation between Krucker and Motzer. The artists think of these spontaneous compositions as worlds that might have been, worlds that hint at what we’ve lost, worlds in which to disappear. Sonic films.

CD
$20 each or $30 for two (of the same CD or with In This Body or Curio Box CD).

LIMITED EDITION CD
$25
Includes beautifully designed 6 panel gatefold CD signed by the artists, numbered (of 200), and comes with an 8in x 12in poster (photography by avraham bank).

For mail orders contact fides@interlog.com
Payment by cash, cheque or e-transfer (non – inclusive of shipping fees).

A digital download code can be included for anyone who purchases the actual CD.

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FOR THE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD ALONE
https://1krecordings.bandcamp.com/album/vanishing

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‘Vanishing’ launch live at The Burdock, Toronto, March 2019

 

ALL ABOUT JAZZ review of VANISHING
Geno Thackara
April 6, 2019

In contrast to the preceding one, this affair couldn’t be less calculated—and yet at the same time, it’s just as meticulous. What Vanishing lacks in planned structure, it balances out in abundance with painstaking detail. Each expressionistic abstraction here is intended as nothing less than a sonic world in miniature, built with guitar, voice, technology and imagination. The instruments in question are used with extreme finesse to results one would never conventionally expect—always a provocative challenge to ears and expectations.
 
With a staggering range and control a Tuvan throat singer would be proud of, Fides Krucker’s voice is less an instrument than a force of nature. She goes from razor-sharp lines to deep-lunged bellows, light coos, sharp gasps or the breathiest of whispers—mere singing is the least of it. The aimless-sounding vocalese of “Ruins” is a deliberate pattern meant to signify dead languages from cultures lost to time, for instance, shaded in by a desolate echo-scape from Tim Motzer’s guitar. With “Rime,” the two eke out just the sparsest touch of frozen mist instead.
 
For his part, Motzer can figure out how to squeeze just about any conceivable sound from simple wood and strings. Occasional melody lines keep the recording from becoming totally abstract, as in the hauntingly dreamlike title track, though the note patterns can still float and fade just as organically as Krucker’s dramaturgy. He builds some percussive noises into the soundscape (very lightly shaded with some additional percussion in a couple spots), but any regular rhythm patterns are still mostly airy—at least until the extended “Density” hits, when it thumps underneath layers of speaking-in-tongues ululation and spooky alien static. You can never know what to expect on a journey to such corners of the imagination, except that it’s something striking and strange at every turn.
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WHOLE NOTE review of VANISHING
Andrew Timar
April 2019

For 35 years Toronto-based classically trained vocalist Fides Krucker has explored contemporary vocal practice on the highest level as a singer in contemporary opera, interdisciplinary and electroacoustic works, as well as in chamber music and orchestral settings. Her career has taken her to numerous international stages. She’s appeared on diverse albums and film and video productions.

The phrase I found on my search engine while looking for Krucker’s website is, “emotionally integrated voice.” And her performance on the six Vanishing tracks powerfully delivers just that. She projects a wide palette of emotions through her voice alone, employing vocal techniques that move comfortably between classical Western and extended voices, often without lyrics.
 
Krucker is superbly supported on Vanishing by Tim Motzer a veteran Philadelphia jazz/improvising guitarist with 80 albums to his credit. He is best known for his textural acoustic-electro guitar playing utilizing looping, bowing, sampling, electronics and various prepared techniques, all richly displayed on Vanishing. The album is cinematic in scope. In its spontaneously composed sonic world each scene in the undefined – sometimes airy and melodically lush, sometimes unsetting – vocal storyline is created though the intimate musical dialogue between Krucker and Motzer.
 
My favourite track is the epic-length Density, which according to the liner notes, “Broods on the state of the world, gathers weight with each motif, steps the listener outside of civilized sound.” Some days taking a walk on the sonic wild side is what the doctor should order.
 
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WHOLE NOTE REVIEW April 2019
“In This Body” reviewed by Raul Da Gama

Anyone who knows the multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary work of Fides Krucker is naturally going to wonder how much of the dance and – more importantly – the theatre that defines Krucker’s art this CD is going to capture. It is, after all merely audio. Fortunately, however, Krucker is a highly evocative vocalist and she spares nothing to imbue her music with atmosphere and even the nuanced auras of her often spiritual and always colourful work.

Even with the suggested stasis of the title, In This Body, one cannot help but imagine the body in motion. This is a work by Krucker, remember? True to form she creates a kind of series of one-woman operatic arias. Each is expressed in an inimitable manner which can only be associated by someone like Krucker. Her version of Leonard Cohen’s iconic piece Suzanne is turned from something almost impressionistic-Cohenesque into a work of extraordinary sensuality in an almost Nabokov-like (Lolita) manner. Another wildly sensual track – Striptease – follows this one.

But Krucker also rings in the changes of mood and emotion, structure and tempo with Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Body’s In Trouble, Leslie Feist’s Let It Die, k.d. lang’s Hain’t It Funny and, of course, the forlorn and classic song Helpless by Neil Young. Along the way, Krucker is magnificently aided by bassist Rob Clutton, pianist Tania Gill and percussionist Germaine Liu. Together the musicians propel Krucker into a rarefied artistic realm where she and her music truly belong.

in this body

Purchase ‘In This Body’
On Amazon
On I-Tunes
On Spotify

CONCEIVED + SUNG BY Fides Krucker
MUSIC ARRANGED & PLAYED BY Rob Clutton, Tania Gill, Germaine Liu

The wilderness of a woman’s heart, voiced through Canadian song and danced to the edge. Fides Krucker – one of Canada’s most original vocalists – and her ensemble are joined by three extraordinary dancers: Peggy Baker, Laurence Lemieux and Heidi Strauss. Together, they brave the landscape of our country’s great songbook – from Joni Mitchell, Alanis Morissette, and k.d. lang, to Lhasa de Sela, Feist, Hawksley Workman, Serena Ryder, and more. An emotional cartographer’s dream.

Hauntingly beautiful show. Experimental songstress Fides Krucker, dance royalty (Baker, Lemieux, Strauss) and three great musicians interpret Canadian songbook. Run don’t walk.”
Paul Citron

“This creation brings an exactness to the mysteries of the heart. Evocative lyrics, masterful choreography, brilliant performances!”
Margie Gillis O.C., C.Q. Dancer, Choreographer, Artistic director

 “Fides’ singing is emotive and transformative. The band is extremely tight and responsive, enveloping the singer’s profound and moving journey. Musical choices throughout are emotionally elegant and intriguing. The dialogue with the three dancers is an added artistic layer which augments the songs and deepens the viewers experience. I was overwhelmed by the emotional content of the show which is raw and exposed and opened me into an extremely vulnerable place.”
Eve Egoyan (pianist)

“The show was moving, heroic, funny, heartbreaking, and so beautifully poignant and musical.”
Peggy Shannon, Chair of Ryerson School of Performance.

“I was struck by the palpable femaleness of the work: how uncommon and powerful it felt; how the depth of embodiment equally challenged and supported me in remaining fully engaged through a work of great intensity; and how, in the immediacy of performance, this very female way of knowing was an entry point into the larger question of how any reality is established, honoured and maintained in relationship.”
Dawne Carleton

“While Fides’s sensibility shapes the show, it is truly a magnificent ensemble experience. From the inventive and moving band arrangements to the remarkably personal choreography, the personality and experience of each performer is clear.”
Alex Fallis

Curio Box

Purchase Curio Box
at Orlando Records
for download on I-Tunes
and streaming on Spotify

You can also purchase discs
from Fides directly:
1 for $20, 2 for $30!

Fides performs Berio with Turning Point Ensemble

Fides is featured on a new disc singing Berio with Turning Point Ensemble.

Whole Note magazine proclaims that “This disc is a standout, with terrific performances and a compelling program of works, all confronting the relationship between the past and the present.”

“Canadian vocalist Fides Krucker’s blazing theatricality and playful brilliance put her in the same league as the fabulous American singer Cathy Berberian, who premiered this work.”
– Whole Note

“Berio’s folk song arrangements run the gamut from American to Jewish, French, Italian, Azerbaijan and three other cultures. They were written, of course, for his wife at the time, mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, and in the lines notes Fides Krucker tells of her utter fascination with Berberian’s performance and how she “spent hours listening to her transform the shape of her mouth, adjust her resonators, and widen or narrow her airflow as she recreated the sound of eight different vocal cultures.” Krucker does a splendid job on them, using her very pretty mezzo voice and, better yet, perfect diction (listen up, operatic mezzos! Her enunciation is as clear as a bell!) to limn the music with just the right feel in every piece. I was particularly impressed by Berio’s arrangement of “I Wonder As I Wander,” which is highly imaginative and surely the finest version of this song I’ve ever heard. Kruecker really gets into her work here, doing a fantastic job on the “Azerbaijan Love Song” as well on all the others.”
– The Art Music Lounge

DIVE: Odes for Lighea

COMPOSITION & SOUND DESIGN BY Nik Beeson with Fides Krucker
TEXT BY Richard Sanger
PERFORMED BY Fides Krucker, Nik Beeson, Rick Sacks, Rob Clutton & Neil Gardiner

‘DIVE: Odes for Lighea’ is a full length CD recording of the music for the opera/sonic theatre project, ‘DIVE’, which premiered in Toronto in July 2015.  Based on Giuseppe de Lampedusa’s ‘The Professor and the Mermaid’, it is a semi-fantastical portrayal, set in fascist Italy, of love, awakening, and possibly madness, told through the love between a classics Professor and a mermaid.

‘DIVE: Odes to Lighea’ has the journey of the Mermaid, performed by Fides Krucker, as its dramatic narrative core. She is the musical presence that sonically animates the opera, and the music and vocal parts. In the course of the recording the Mermaid passes through multiple stylistic disguises: a howling banshee sonically crushing a crowd of fascists; a devastated, then furious, jilted “Tata” singing melodies derived from Greek folk music; a wry old crone of a waitress informing a young male lead that he’s been dumped through a crumbling descending folk melody; a seductive young waitress in a seedy bar sings a Waits/Mingus/Partch rendition of clients debits (actually the many explorers who were her former lovers); an ecstatic fascist maid improvises over a time-stretched speech by Mussolini; and finally the divine and wild being herself, seducing over lilting ambient melodic waves, inspiring awe and wonder in calling into action the ocean itself with Straussian majesty, and then exploding into the towering wild rage of a storm.

These music works use a wide range of styles and sonic techniques:
a speech by Mussolini and his ecstatic crowd is crushed by a mighty mermaid ‘roar’, washing out into waves, gulls, a buoy bell; traditionally scored and electroacoustic Arias; fat analog synths and wolves; Crystal Baschet, Vibraphone and Mbira; Cloud Bowls’ (glass instruments designed and built by American microtonal pioneer Harry Partch); a remix of Persian traditional master improvisers; ambient melodies for mbira, vibraphone & dulcimer.

OPENING NIGHT

JULIE TRIMINGHAM

BUTTERFLY

JULIE TRIMINGHAM

PIERROT LUNAIRE

COMPOSER: ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
DIRECTOR: THOM SOKOLOSKI
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