Cantares de la Frontera

Peter Garland’s Cantares de la frontera (1986) are songs from the Mexico-U.S. border, gently afloat in their irregular repetitions and also in how the melodic drifts are not entirely tied to the wandering bass. Clíona Doris continues with a short piece Deirdre McKay wrote for her in 2018: handwoven. The reference is clear: a harp is like a loom. As the composer puts it: ‘Focussed on the harp’s own workings, neat fingers weave, in close quarters, drawing out patternings.’ The patternings are repeated, or else they shift, always within the orbit of the busy stillness of G flat arpeggios that open the composition and recur.