silver dawn

Album review

Zosha Warpeha's solo debut silver dawn captures her unique blend of Norwegian folk culture and experimental improvisation. Warpeha roots her creative improvisations in traditional Norwegian music that evolved around a violin-like instrument called a hardingfele, or Hardanger fiddle. When compared to a violin, this folk instrument has two distinctive traits: four or five sympathetic resonance strings that pass through a hollow fingerboard, and a relatively-flat bridge conducive to bowing two strings at once.

Since the hardingfele is traditionally played unaccompanied, its tonality revolves around using notes that best activate the resonance strings, rather than playing in a conventional Western equal-tempered scale. Warpeha uses not a traditional hardingfele, but a Hardanger d'amore, a modern derivation with five bowed strings instead.

An antecedent to Warpeha's merging of traditions might be Malcolm Goldstein's improvisations around Eastern European folk songs. Where Goldstein could combine a literal performance of a folk song with  radical textural improvisation on his violin, Warpeha uses an approach with less explicit borders. While her underlying approach on silver dawn reflects a deep knowledge of folk traditions, Warpeha improvises new melodies and structures drawn from these concepts. Even her more abstract playing manifests its roots in tradition, with only hints of extended technique far removed from Goldstein's ongoing focus on radical timbre.

On three of the pieces, Warpeha adds wordless vocals that float into the sonic space created by her bowing. Most of silver dawn is instrumental, with the Hardanger d'amore's familiar, yet still unique sound carrying the listener through the thirteen improvisations, which mostly last from two to four minutes. While Warpeha uses overt and memorable melodies, she more often emphasizes the instrument's harmonic richness, and how subtle tonal movement can create structure that engages and rewards a listener's attention. Warpeha's combination of folk and intellectual traditions on silver dawn results in a beautiful album, with incongruous influences merged into an organic whole that breathes in its own carefully-defined atmosphere. © Steve Silverstein/Qobuz