“The music of singer, flutist, and composer Nathalie Joachim’s newest album draws on a long history, and not just from the classical tradition: Joachim was inspired by the music of her Haitian heritage on Fanm d’Ayiti, creating a beautiful blend of tuneful melodies sung in Haitian Creole with forward-thinking, colorful accompaniment. With help from the Chicago-based Spektral Quartet, Joachim weaves together flute, string quartet, voice, electronics, spoken passages from her grandmother, and advice from some legendary women of Haitian music to make for an album that celebrates the women of Haiti.”
The Nation: Ten of 2019’s Best Albums
“Fanm d’Ayiti is a gorgeously vivid musical scrapbook of testaments by Joachim, a seasoned composer and vocalist whose debut was long overdue, to the women of Haitian heritage who inspired her.”
Bandcamp Daily: The Best Contemporary Classical Albums of 2019
“She’s empathically supported by the lustrous strings of Spektral Quartet—sometimes solemn, sometimes playful—and several pieces meticulously deploy electronic beats and her own serene flute lines. For ‘Suite pou Dantan’ she built the pieces around a children’s church choir she recorded in Dantan, underlining how Haitians adapted Catholic liturgy to tribal religious beliefs from West Africa. Her singing has a measured, crystalline soulfulness to it, and throughout this spectacular record she effortlessly blends the past and present, tradition and the contemporary.”
Ted Gioia: The 100 Best Recordings of 2019
HONORABLE MENTION
Nathalie Joachim: Fanm d'Ayiti
Genre-Crossing Music from Haitian-American Composer/Performer
I Care If You Listen: Editor’s Picks: 2019 Contemporary Classical Albums
“Nominated for a GRAMMY award in the Best World Music Album category, Fanm d’Ayiti is one of the most personal and genuine albums released this year. The album ranges from delightfully off-kilter ostinati accompanying the girl’s choir from her family’s village of Dantan (“Alléluia” from Suite pour Dantan) to stripped down unaccompanied vocals (Lamizè Pa Dous) to the voices of influential women professing, ‘Have faith in yourself and keep going…don’t ever feel inferior.’ Part ethnomusicological exploration and part personal discovery, Fanm d’Ayiti is an absolute triumph.”
Washington Post: Whistles, rumbles, bleeps: New Icelandic music sounds like no string quartet you’ve ever heard
“The premiere was the finale of an appealing program which, according to quartet violinist Clara Lyon, was meant to evoke the experience of looking up at the night sky, studded with a range of disparate stars. The Chicago-based quartet juxtaposed, on the first half, music by Tomás Luis de Victoria, the 16th-century priest-composer; Eliza Brown, also from Chicago; and Beethoven, represented by his final quartet, Op. 135. The quartet gave the latter an engaging reading: warm-blooded and communicative, emphasizing humanity over admiration of the Greatness of the Work.”
The New Yorker: Nathalie Joachim
“No more joyous chamber-music collection has arrived this year than “Fanm d’Ayiti,” the exuberant, expressive song cycle that Nathalie Joachim recorded with Spektral Quartet, a brilliant Chicago-based string outfit. The flutist and composer, best known for her work in the ensembles Eighth Blackbird and Flutronix, dug deeply into her Haitian heritage for this work, which she and Spektral perform at Merkin Concert Hall, on Oct. 26, as part of the Ecstatic Music series. Over soaring flute figurations, crystalline string textures, a recorded girls’ choir, and electronic beats, Joachim sings sweetly and strongly in praise of Haitian women—some of whom, including Joachim’s grandmother, speak for themselves in pre-captured testimony.”
New York Times Classical: A Musical Reflection on Haitian Matriarchy
“Delicately entrancing songs for string quartet, flute, and electronics — led by Joachim’s powerful and unpretentious voice — alternate with recorded spoken interludes as well as the singing of a girls choir from Joachim’s family’s village. Released in August on New Amsterdam Records, the project arrives at Merkin Hall in Manhattan on Saturday, as part of the Ecstatic Music Festival, with Joachim joined by the intrepid Spekral Quartet.”
I Care If You Listen: Nathalie Joachim’s Fanm d’Ayiti: a Complex and Multi-Faceted Celebration
“On her debut solo album, Fanm d’Ayiti (New Amsterdam Records), Haitian-American composer, flutist, and vocalist Nathalie Joachim offers the listener an intimacy of vocal storytelling and a blossoming sense of familiarity. It is a program that clearly lives in a special world in both its live performance and audio recording forms. While not wanting to spoil that experience for those who haven’t listened yet, the magic of the album lies in the accruing nature of the work. Each track deepens the relationship between Joachim and the listener, with the support of Spektral Quartet’s remarkable musicianship. As in life, the power of the connection is realized once each chapter has been experienced and we arrive at the final exaltation overcome with the beauty of the whole.”
The Nation: A Haitian Music Oral History That Bends Space and Time
“Three of the songs on the album, including the opener, “Papa Loko,” and the closing title track, “Fanm d’Ayiti,” are Haitian folk songs Joachim rearranged, maintaining the traditional feeling of the material but updating and brightening it with judiciously clever use of her electronics and subtle, often wry string work performed by the Spektral Quartet, a chamber ensemble in residence at the University of Chicago.”
San Francisco Classical Voice: What Should I Wear With This Album?
“Composer and flutist Nathalie Joachim has delivered my favorite album of the summer with her Fanm d’Ayiti (Women of Haiti), released by New Amsterdam Records on Aug. 30. Within my first listen I knew I would be going back, for full vacations and just for short visits to sunny tracks like the tripartite “Suite Pou Dantan.”
…
Each song brims with significance, but without undue weight, and Joachim’s singing is mixed just in the right spot throughout. There is fresh air in the instrumentation of these tracks — Spektral Quartet and Joachim on flute, with electronics. The small number of instruments makes each arrangement intimate, and yet with fewer people, the space between their voices is open. It is a very intense experience to listen to the whole album, especially once you are knee deep in “Madan Bellegarde.” It has an elegant arc, though, that makes the brightness in the final, titular track cathartic in a way that is not too large to carry.”
Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: August 2019
“She’s empathically supported by the lustrous strings of Spektral Quartet—sometimes solemn, sometimes playful—and several pieces meticulously deploy electronic beats and her own serene flute lines. For “Suite pou Dantan” she built the pieces around a children’s church choir she recorded in Dantan, underlining how Haitians adapted Catholic liturgy into tribal religions from West Africa. Her singing has a measured, crystalline soulfulness to it, and throughout this spectacular record she effortlessly blends the past and present, the rustic and sophisticated.”
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Chicago Reader: Spektral Quartet’s new season takes deep dives in diverse directions
“Gossip Wolf is routinely bowled over by Chicago's Spektral Quartet—not only do these supreme string shredders totally rip it up, but they also chuck stereotypes about classical music right out the conservatory window! This month, Spektral fire up their 2019-2020 season, entitled "Totally Obsessed," which showcases a ludicrously wide range of creativity. On Wednesday, August 14, at Constellation, they perform a totally far-out piece from longtime collaborator LJ White that's based on the Shaggs' 1969 outre-rock classic "My Pal Foot Foot." On Friday, August 30, New Amsterdam Records drops the album Fanm d'Ayiti, where Spektral accompany Haitian American composer, flutist, and singer Nathalie Joachim in her suite of the same name; they play a release concert with Joachim (a member of Eighth Blackbird) at Black Ensemble Theater on Friday, September 13. On Thursday, November 14, they perform works by Shulamit Ran and Kotoka Suzuki as well as Enigma, a new commission from Anna Thorvaldsdottir, as part of their ongoing residency at the University of Chicago—and that's not even mentioning anything in 2020!”
Chicago Classical Review: Trapani’s musical islands are joined in Spektral Quartet program
“The audience went island-hopping around the world with the Spektral Quartet Saturday night, at the University of Chicago’s International House.
The event was a concert titled “Enchanted Islands: A Travelogue.” The chamber group performed Books I and II of Isolario: Book of Known Islands—a musical atlas of sorts composed by Christopher Trapani—with Book II receiving its world premiere.
This was preceded by Schubert’s “Rosamunde” quartet. (Rosamunde is set on Cyprus, you see.)
The Schubert performance was surprisingly light-footed even in the darkest passages. In the opening bars Clara Lyon (playing first violin) clipped the little phrases of the main theme short, exaggerating the rests between them. Then, when the theme returned in the major, Lyon lengthened the final notes, as if the melody had relaxed a bit—a quirky yet effective interpretive touch…”
“But Trapani is a superb craftsman. He wove together the analog and the electronic so seamlessly that it was hard to tell which sounds were coming from the quartet on stage, and which from the speakers.
This integration is a testament not only to Trapani’s skill in melding the two media, but also to Spektral’s precision of playing. “Kalymnos” from Book I included the din of dynamite blasts from an Easter celebration, with Spektral having to land their notes together with the explosions. “Baracoa” from Book II featured a recording of a mechanical organ, with which the quartet had to remain in tightly coordinated dialogue…”
The Michigan Daily: Zenón and the Spektral Quartet at The Cube
“Much of the concert functioned like a study in contrasts. Often the quartet would lock into a tight and controlled pattern, almost hocket-like, providing a backdrop for Zenón to improvise fluid and athletic lines above, below, around and within the quartet’s music, the rigidity of the quartet starkly different from the saxophone line. At other times the contrasts would be sectional — at one moment all the musicians might be sawing out a line in fierce melodic and rhythmic unison (like in“Milagrosa,” which near its end was quite reminiscent of Messiaen’s famous “Dance of Fury” movement in “Quartet for the End of Time”), and in the next they might break out into a joyful and light latin-inflected groove, as if spontaneously.
One thing that felt like less of a contrast than might be thought, however, was the blending of different musical traditions. The juxtaposition of jazz and the seething string harmonies hardly felt like juxtaposition at all — the music’s disparate influences blended seamlessly together. Zenón’s smooth improvisation over the strings interwove easily with the textures, and at times members of the quartet matched this spontaneity of sound with improvisatory sections of their own, as Zenón confirmed to me when I asked him afterwards.
Zenón and Spektral Quartet together were fascinating together, and this type of concert is exactly the sort of programing that helps keep a contemporary arts organization alive and vibrant in the modern world.”