Renowned, repeatedly acclaimed, award-winning flautists Steve Markoff and Patricia Lazzara return with an album initially promised in 2024, but delayed due to unforeseen injury – a globe-trotting, celebratory escapade appropriately titled For the World. Featuring 18 tracks of adroitly composed music interpreted for flute, For the World celebrates international composers/performers and their legendary, culturally galvanizing pieces. Ready to soar with the frolicking, exacting, and emotional flutes of Steve Markoff and Patricia Lazzara? Let’s listen, and hit the highlights.
Wait. Who does what?
Steve Markoff – Alto flute
Patricia Lazzara – Concert flute
Dave Malyszko – Yep, he’s back on piano!
Listening, and talking about it (i.e., hitting the highlights).
For the World begins with “Ashokan Farewell.” Originally written by American composer Jay Unger in 1982, this sad but lip-stiffened farewell piece is handled perfectly by our adept flute-slinging duo. The melodic lines present strength, and the harmonies imply more subtle vulnerabilities. What a powerful and moving album opener!
“Bāng Chhun-hong,” a popular Taiwanese folk song meaning “Longing for the Spring breeze,” is exactly that – a musical longing featuring imagined breezes expressed by fragile and floating flutes. The instrumentation weightless as casual air currents, peacefully anxious, and perhaps intermittently sad, “Bāng Chhun-hong” is another incredible musical experience.
“Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” a Canadian folk song written by the one and only Gordon Lightfoot, perfectly conveys this railroad-celebrating three-part piece. And all the emotions tied to creating the legendary Canadian transcontinental railway – from idealized conception, to obstinate construction, to eventual completion – are explored, lifted, and crystallized emphatically by Steve and Patricia’s hopeful, humanistic flutes.
“The Old Years,” written by Italian composer Armando Ghidoni, was specifically commissioned by our flute-clutching couple. It begins as a partial lament until Dave’s piano elicits a daring, darting, startlingly exact ragtime/blues/jazz section. And Steve and Patricia follow each arrow-pointed piano pressing with time-perfect accuracy and additive musical responses. After the flurry, the tumult of those fraught adolescent years, is a musical peace. An understanding. An acquisition of quiet acceptance, perhaps. What an amazing interpretation that quickly became a personal album favorite!
“Japanese Suite,” technically “Sōran Bushi,” is a famous, historically steeped Japanese folk song reflecting the lives of fishermen in Hokkaido. Featuring the flute and high-pitch-tweeting piccolo, “Japanese Suite” is the musical expression of hardship, of hope held sternly through uncooperative seas. This short piece creates culturally pervasive Japanese chord structures; a piece Steve and Patricia interpret with accurate melodic trepidation and arcing, emotional flights and lilts.
“The Homes of Donegal,” a famous Irish ballad written in 1955 by Seán McBride, is more Irish than the four-leaf clover, and perhaps, dare I say, the wish-giving Blarney Stone (but don’t tell the Blarney Stone). A song that longs for home comforts, Steve and Patricia, with melodic foundations and sky-running flute responses, create the Irish landscape, the algae-accented stones, the rolling, plush hills and slowly, dependably inching clouds. What a perfect, picturesque piece describing an immortally felt moment in time.
Of the World concludes with “Shenandoah,” a famous American folk song created during the 19th century. Telling the tale of a fur trader’s love for the daughter of a Native American Chieftain – the famous Shenandoah of the Oneida Iroquois tribe – “Shenandoah” is a peacefully lamenting piece constructed by Dave’s foundational arpeggios, and Steve and Patricia’s calling/answering flute flights. Musically, our trio recreates the deep woods, rolling streams, and perhaps obstinate, protective customs of an ancient people. The music tells the tale splendidly, mournfully, and hastily – the song, this epic but quiet story, features a brevity that, as a purposeful byproduct, creates an emotional longing lasting far longer than any decaying physical notes.
But is it good?
Steve Markoff and Patricia Lazzara have done it….again! They took already quite brilliant compositions and performances and made them, somehow….better! Okay, not “somehow” – they utilized their flutes as effectively as the human voice. The puffed notes wither and wake, creating indestructible beams carrying untold, historically heavy weights, and fragile petals surrounding diamond sconces of fading, jittering light. Sorry to dip into the abstract, but the interpretations here need a bit of creative-brain extraction; they’re taking deeply human challenges and chambering them in eternal, feeling-amplifying amber glass. They’re taking delicate, immortal musical expressions and granting them more emotional resonance to both honor and uplift. Of the World is the best from our world, from various days and decades, and Steve Markoff and Patricia Lazzara’s additive interpretations grant these globally situated musical hopes an eternally felt and burning torch. This music – these places, times, and people – should never be forgotten; they should be forever heard and held onto. EXTREMELY AMAZING, AND VERY MUCH RECOMMENDED!
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BELOW: Listen to Steve Markoff & Patricia Lazzara and check them out on Spotify, YouTube, Facebook,and Apple Music. Please support Steve Markoff & Patricia Lazzara by visiting their website and playing, downloading, and/or purchasing their music. And, as always, thank you for supporting real music.
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