Music For Denali

Album review

Music for Denali contains some of Suzanne Ciani's earliest professionally commissioned work, composed for a 1973 documentary about the first skiers' descent from Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America. Recorded using just a piano and a Buchla synthesizer, Ciani's material is informed by her classical training while demonstrating her zeal for exploring the latest synthesizer technology at the time. Given the context of her career, this recording sounds like a preliminary, less-polished version of the sound she would master at the beginning of the 1980s; indeed, the pleasantly humming piece "Downhill at Last" would be reworked for Ciani's official debut LP, 1982's now-legendary Seven Waves. The sonic landscape here is a combination of brittle coldness and human warmth, perfectly fitting for a film about braving subzero temperatures to scale and ski down a breathtakingly majestic peak. The piano melodies are optimistic yet calm and graceful rather than bursting with pure elation, and they ride atop an inventive array of gauzy synth textures and flickering pulsations. At times, it doesn't sound too far off from the idea of Cluster tackling "Skating" from Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas score. Some pieces are literal interpretations of scenes from the expedition -- the drifting pianos of "Windy Corner" are awash in electronic whooshes, while "The Last Rest" begins with what sounds like either trudging through snow or heavy breathing as one finally reaches a stopping point. "Getting to the Top" is the most abstract, alien piece here, commencing with more frostbitten wind sounds before developing crystalline chimes and a somewhat harsh, whistling drone. A short release at only 21 minutes, Music for Denali nevertheless paints a compelling portrait of a historic scene, and points to the epic peaks Ciani would later reach in her groundbreaking career.
© Paul Simpson /TiVo