CHTHONICA is the debut album of violist/improviser/composer Heather Bentley’s composed works for chamber ensemble. 

Written over a three year period, the quartet and quintet bear witness and honor two artists whose work has had a profound impact on the composer.

Scored for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, PIXIE is an homage to Pamela Colman Smith (Pixie was her nickname), illustrator of the Ryder/Waite/Smith tarot deck. Completed in 1911, this deck is the most sold tarot deck in the US and is widely considered the benchmark for esoteric tarot art. A synesthete, she would listen to music while painting and drawing, thus the imagery of the cards emerged in her mind through sound. In composing this piece, Heather reverse engineered the process by doing several readings, using different tarot spreads, and listening for the sounds they evoked. She then created a second “deck” of musical themes on blank playing cards and searched for new sound patterns through more readings. Pixie led a remarkable life from her early experiences in Kingston, Jamaica, to the Pratt Art Institute, and back to London where she illustrated books by Bram Stoker and William Butler Yeats. It was through WB Yeats that she became involved with the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and met Arthur Edward Waite, who asked her to illustrate the new deck he was developing.

For Nellie (2023) is a twenty minute piece in four movements for piano and string quartet, inspired by the setting of its premiere in August 2023: the Sarah P. Duke Gardens on the campus of Duke University.This garden was the work of Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950) who was a pioneer in American landscape design. Dedicated in 1939, the garden is considered Shipman’s greatest work and is a national architectural treasure.A year before the dedication of the garden, Shipman (Nellie) commented in The New York Times that “before women took hold of the profession, landscape architects were doing what I call cemetery work.”Shipman’s lush plantings created outdoor rooms, which offered the possibility of private space where women could enjoy their solitude.
For Nellie traces a year in the garden, with midpoints between Solstices and Equinoxes lending their names to the four movements.
November seems still and dormant, yet activity continues beneath the soil’s surface. 
February sees the emergence of crocuses and other tiny budding things, bursting with incipient life.
May is a torrent of growth and a tangle of ferocious fecundity.
August is a time of repose.

The piece is partially through composed, and partially improvised, with chance and choice elements in places.

Recorded in the magnificent Recreational Psychoacoustic Laboratory in July of 2024, Heather was joined by five magnificent colleagues from the Seattle area: Victoria Parker on violin, Elizabeth Simkin on cello, Rachel Yoder on clarinet, Jesse Myers on piano, with Elizabeth Phelps joining on violin, as well, for the quintet. Eric Padget was the extraordinary sound engineer, and my dear friend and musical comrade Kaley Lane Eaton produced. The inexplicable sorcery of mastering was done by Rachel Fields at Resonant Mastering.