Tiento

Francesco Canova da Milano Fantasia 40; Fantasia 21; Mon Père Si Ma Marie;Eduardo Sáinz de La Maza Campanas del Alba; Joaquin Nin-Culmell Seis Variationes Sobre un Tema de Milán; Regino Sáinz de la Maza Petenera; Zapateado; Rondeña; Antonio Lauro Natalia; El Registro (from Suite Venezolana); Andreina; Maurice Ohana Tiento; Dušan Bogdanović Mysterious Habitats;

Brendan Evans
Green Flash Music https://www.greenflashmusic.com/

Debut recordings carry their own peculiar pressure, and guitarists know it better than most. The instrument's repertoire contains enough warhorses to furnish a dozen safe first discs, so it is genuinely heartening to encounter Brendan Evans arriving with something altogether more considered.

Tiento is an album shaped by intellectual curiosity and real stylistic range — a programme built around the Spanish tiento tradition, with its roots in improvisation, expressive nuance, and centuries of cultural interplay, and framed by three Renaissance works by Francesco Canova da Milano.

Those Renaissance pieces reveal Evans at his most assured. The two Fantasias are played with clarity and long-arc phrasing that takes the listener decisively back in time, while Campanas del Alba conjures an immediate sense of Spanish life: the tremolo work shimmers, the harmonics ring with natural resonance, and one can picture without effort the early-morning church bells pealing across a sunlit village. It is evocative writing served with exemplary technique.

The title track itself is something else again — moody, mysterious, and genuinely captivating, its enigmatic closing bars staying with the listener long after the disc ends. Evans balances this introspective quality with Zapateado, which captures the rhythmic energy and percussive spirit of the flamenco-rooted form with real conviction. The album closes with Mysterious Habitats, another atmospheric miniature that rounds off the programme with atmospheric coherence rather than mere padding.

What distinguishes Tiento most is its repertoire. Aficionados of the guitar will find much to admire in Evans's textural sensitivity and the intelligence of his programme-building; but the album is emphatically not a disc aimed only at the converted. These are largely unfamiliar pieces, and Evans makes a persuasive case for each of them. Do not come expecting overrecorded standards— come expecting an absorbing journey through miniatures that reward attentive listening. Tiento is a fine ambassador for a finely honed musical voice.