TRPTK released Aysha Wills’ new CD today, titled ‘Bach: Flute Sonatas’. The album should offer a new view at the works.
Aysha Wills (Calgary, 1994) has been playing flute since she was five years old. Her love for baroque music awakened when she took music lessons in Canada using the Suzuki method. Harmony, melody and rhythm are the main ingredients of this musical style and soon she had baroque to learn, beginning with Vivaldi’s famous flute concerto ‘Il Gardellino’. At age 12, she met traverso player Marten Root during a summer course in Canada. A musical friendship developed that led to her coming to the Netherlands permanently at seventeen. At the Amsterdam Conservatory she took lessons in baroque with Root and for the modern repertoire she was taught by Harrie Starreveld and Kersten McCall.
Master with emphasis on Early Music
For her Master she took a special program with an emphasis on Early Music: ‘Flute in Historical Perspective’. She graduated cum laude in 2017 and since then she has been at the forefront of, among other things, the baroque ensemble Postscript, which focuses mainly on the performance of lesser-known baroque repertoire. Their first album “Introdvctio” for the TRPTK label was received with extraordinary enthusiasm. Aart van der Wal wrote in Opus Klassiek: “(….) what should be there in the best baroque tradition is there: spirituality, passion, energy and by extension risk-taking. The recording is so razor-sharp in detail that every breath is audible, so to speak (….).”
Love for Bach
For her debut, Wills chose J.S. Bach’s famous flute sonatas, one of the most important works ever written for the traverso. “My love for Bach began early on with the endless playing of the ‘Goldberg Variations’ in Glenn Gould’s performance. Bach’s music evokes deep emotions in me and the contrasts he brings to his compositions are peerless. More than many of his contemporaries, he brings tension and manages to alternate naturally,” Wills says. “I felt that now was the time to record his flute sonatas. In my approach, I take a slightly freer approach to rhythm and interplay and bring in ornamentation where I think the music calls for it. I think Bach would have done this as well.” This exemplary recorded release of Bach’s flute sonatas, provided by record label TRPTK, could easily become a new reference, the label thinks.