"I absolutely love Satie," Jackson-Holman tells us over email. "I learned Gymnopédie No. 1 when I was in third grade, and it was memorably one of my favorite pieces I learned growing up. I love the spaciousness of his pieces, and the way that they’re gently supportive rather than flashy and demanding."
Certainly there is Satie in 'Solarium', but there is also a sensitivity to pop melody that can only have come from a cocktail of influences on a modern musician; the four-note ascending melody in the mid-section, for example, is tinged with pre-chorus preamble, the stepping stones before tumbling into a Lana Del Rey-esque refrain. And then there are flourishes that feel more virtuosic, Chopin-flavoured, showcasing Jackson-Holman's classical background.
Written with "a memory of sun on water, the feeling of being suspended and weightless in a deep green lake", 'Solarium' serves as "a sonic portal" for the composer, taking her back to this time. It's achieved through this Satie-level intentional simplicity, and in its three-part, sonata-esque brevity.
Themes are introduced, reversed and inversed, transposed into the relative minor and recapitulated in the final third — a reflection of the constant cycle of memory and the fluid nature of our connection to recollections as we hark back, ache with yearning, and return to hazy remembrance. And all played with a seamlessly phrased singing tone — wizardry, an incantation for that "sonic portal".
- 🔔 The disarmingly simple 'Solarium' is Selkolla's first foray into the classical world. It is currently available to stream on Spotify.
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