Waxing Moon
The new ablum
Rebecca Foon, the composer and musician behind Saltland and Esmerine (and former longstanding member of Silver Mt. Zion) presents a new album entitled Waxing Moon. While best known as an incomparable cellist (and more recently, as a cofounder of Pathway To Paris) this collection of songs finds Foon emphasizing piano and voice with striking intimacy and elegance, showcasing a profoundly captivating evolution in her always resplendent songwriting.
With Waxing Moon, Rebecca is setting aside the Saltland moniker – her electronically-tinged string-centric project from the past five years – and will release this more personal new work under her own name. The album's ten songs are predominantly minimal and delicate, immersive and hauntingly beautiful – with vocal-driven tracks booked-ended by piano-based instrumentals, along with one up-tempo guitar-driven number ("Wide Open Eyes") that closes out Side One. While piano figures most prominently on the record, Foon continues to play cello on several tracks, complemented by gentle touches from a close coterie of musical guests including Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire) and Mishka Stein (Patrick Watson) on acoustic and electric basses, Sophie Trudeau (Godspeed You Black Emperor) on violin, Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes) on electric guitar, and Patrick Watson as co-vocalist on the dreamlike "Vessels". Foon co-produced the album with Lasek at Montréal's Breakglass studio and it sounds glorious.
Waxing Moon is Rebecca Foon's first eponymous album and a glimmeringly full-hearted new chapter in her celebrated musical catalog. Thanks for listening.
Saltland
Saltland is Rebecca Foon's solo project. The first album featured a long list of friends and past collaborators while on the second album Rebecca set out to create a more rigorously solo work, using her cello as the predominant source for almost all the music and sounds on the record.
A Common Truth (2017)
Constellation Records
"[G]orgeous, cinematic"
The Quietus
The second solo album by Rebecca Foon, composer and cellist from Esmerine, Thee Silver Mt Zion and Set Fire To Flames. The four instrumental tracks on the album were co-written with Warren Ellis (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dirty Three), with Warren contributing violin, loops and pump organ.
"With a voice equally suited to opening petals and opening wounds, Foon sings to the earth like a mother to a newborn, beaming with hope while gripped with fear. But she also offers an alternate form of resistance: transformation.”
NPR
I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us (2013)
Constellation Records
Foon's voice [is] an instrument of somnolent, gossamer allure which floats gracefully amid the eddying, amniotic music."
MOJO [4/5]
Colin Stetson
Sorrow (2016)
Kartel Music Group
Acclaimed saxophonist and multireedist Colin Stetson presents a reimagining of Henryk Górecki's most famous piece, 'Symphony No 3' aka the ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’, a collaboration with a dozen musicians including Rebecca Foon on cello.
Esmerine
Rebecca co-founded the minimalist, modern chamber music group Esmerine in 2001 with percussionist Bruce Cawdron. Anchored by Bruce's mallet playing and Rebecca's expressive cello, Esmerine has released five critically acclaimed albums.
Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More (2022)
Constellation Records
"Post-rock, neo-classical, experimental, whatever genre or sub-genre you wish to file it under, it makes no difference. Good records are good records and, whichever way you slice it, Esmerine’s return is not only needed, it’s one of the beautiful surprises of the year. The more time spent with Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More, the stronger it will get. With this record, Esmerine may just be the masters of the slow burn."
Sun-13
Awarded Instrumental Album of the Year, Juno's 2023
Mechanics of Dominion (2017)
Constellation Records
“Mechanics of Dominion is a bold, gripping and brilliantly nuanced addition to Esmerine's gorgeous catalogue, swelling with hope and brimming with energy.”
Exclaim! 9/10
Lost Voices (2015)
Constellation Records
"A dynamic nine-song collection that ranges from dark and brooding to uplifting and celebratory... Soaring, dramatic and entirely engaging."
Exclaim!
#4 Album of 2015
A Closer Listen
Winner of the 2016 Juno Award: Recording Package Of The Year
2016 Juno Nominee: Instrumental Album Of The Year
Dalmak (2013)
Constellation Records
"Meditative drones and shifting melodies of the Canadians’ strings and percussions are vamped up by an array of [Turkish] sounds...in a thrilling and meaningful conversation."
New Internationalist
“A listen of brutal intensity and beautiful celebration...At times, melodies are plucked quietly, arcing as delicately as black eyelashes, but they never deviate from what is at the center – an intense cauldron of dynamic fire and free flowing passion.”
Fluid Radio
Winner of the 2014 Juno Award: Instrumental Album of the Year
La Lechuza (2011)
Constellation Records
La Lechuza is an eulogy to Lhasa de Sela and a testament to the newfound creative relationships that she helped bring forth
snowdayforlhasa.com
"A towering achievement... emotive and powerful, delicately wrought and stunningly beautiful. The recording is outstanding... a rare pleasure from start to finish."
The 405
"What distinguishes it from so many artists skirting the overlaps between new folk and chamber music-style arrangements is the attention to composition and content. Where lesser talents are content merely to create mood, satisfying themselves with the surface rewards of alternative timbres, Esmerine wrap mood around substance."
The Wire
Aurora (2005)
Madrona Records
Esmerine released two critically-acclaimed albums on their own Madrona Records imprint. These albums had one foot in the new music/experimental terrain of contemporaries like Rachel's or Town And Country and the other in a more visceral and lyrical instrumental landscape, as cultivated by the likes of The Dirty Three and Godspeed You! Black Emperor
If Only A Sweet Surrender To The Nights To Come Be True (2003)
Resonant Records / Madrona Records
Pathway to Paris
Live at Le Trianon, Paris (2016)
MP3 ablum
Recorded live at Le Trianon in Paris, December 4 & 5, 2015, the album captures highlights from each artist’s performances, and includes the full speeches given by some of the environmental movement’s leading lights.
Live at City Winery, NYC (2016)
Original music and words: John Lennon
Performed & recorded live at City Winery NYC, September 19th, 2016 as part of a Pathway to Paris concert event in collaboration with the UNDP, Maintaining the Momentum: A Call to Action on Climate, highlighting the importance of turning the Paris Agreement into action.
The Mile End Ladies String Auxiliary
Rebecca Foon was a founding member of Mile End Ladies String Auxiliary along with Sophie Trudeau (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and Genevieve Heistek (Hanged Up)
The Mile End Ladies String Auxiliary
From Cells Of Roughest Air (2006)
Bangor Records
"An absolutely lovely idea; its amazing it took this long to gather the pre-eminent Montreal ladies of the stringed instruments together for their own compositions."
Exclaim!
Fifths of Seven
Rebecca Foon was a founding member of Fifths of Seven along with Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Moonface) and Rachel Levine.
Fifths of Seven
Spry From Bitter Anise (2005)
Disques de soleil et de l’acier
"And though they utilize familiar ingredients, the trio's rigorous, European folk-inflected chamber music manages to sound quite distinct from anything else in their musical genealogy, resulting in this exquisite, understated pearl of a debut."
Pitchfork
Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band
13 Blues For Thirteen Moons (2008)
Constellation Records
“[A] flash flood, an album that saturates the senses with a surge of acerbic, sledge-hammering riffs and drenching orchestration… An album that stretches beyond emotional boundaries and embeds itself within walls of the heart.”
Drowned in Sound
Horses In The Sky (2005)
Constellation Records
“[T]ouching and beautiful... This staggered use of choir… is extremely effective, set against the backdrop of splintered chamber arrangements and coarse, demanding strings.”
The Wire
"This Is Our Punk-Rock" Thee Rusted Satellites Gather + Sing (2003)
Constellation Records
“[A] set of staggering, epic songs… [T]hese are less tiniest worried symphonies and more howls of humanity, in which roused caterwauling, feedback guitar, and buzzing violins stir up sounds to match restless souls.
Neumu
Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward (2001)
Constellation Records
“Absolutely stunning... The emotions that these musicians are able to convey just through the pull of a bow across the strings or a simple, haunting piano line are astounding.”
Delusions of Adequacy
Set Fire To Flames
Telegraphs In Negative/Mouths Trapped In Static (2003)
Alien-8 Recordings
"... melodic songwriting, memorable and complex in their use of overlapping instrumentation and extended techniques."
Pitchfork
"Frightening creaking chairs, wary violins and atonal guitars sound ancient and extraterrestrial, and completely disorient the listener as to what time of day it is."
Exclaim!
Sings Reign Rebuilder (2001)
Alien-8 Recordings
"[B]loody beautiful... The sound is in epic widescreen, recorded over a five day stretch on cheap da-88's rolling freely, capturing the shifting ensemble as they drift compositions in and out of focus, in and out of improvisation and environmental noise."
BBC