This release by Quebec violinist Angèle Dubeau is dedicated specifically to Dubeau's fellow survivors of serious illness, in her case cancer, expressing the aim of "luminous music that can bring interior peace through its strength and powerful evocation." As such it might seem to differ little from any number of other crossover releases filled with mellow tunes. But Dubeau's album has reached the Canadian top ten, indicating that plenty of healthy buyers have found it. What sets it apart from the competition is first the variety of the music that gets fit into the basic middle-of-the-road template, and second the rich string arrangements that surround Dubeau's violin and its piercing yet sweet tone. Her version of Cat Stevens' Morning Has Broken (track 6) sounds like one of the lush Japanese string orchestra Beatles arrangements from the 1960s. But even better is the mixture of tunes that Dubeau and her all-female ensemble La Pietà adapt for their purposes: the music is a good deal more heterogeneous than it may seem. Try to find another album on which Stevens coexists with Osvaldo Golijov, Ennio Morricone, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and even the iconoclastic American-South African rocker Shawn Phillips. Ultimate reactions to this album will depend on how listeners feel about an entire program of uniformly moderate-tempo and tonally plain melodies, but anyone may find Dubeau's release more effective than expected. Studio sound from a multimedia center at McGill University in Montreal is a major plus.

Track List:

01. BioShock: The Ocean On His Shoulders - Pairbond
02. Close Your Eyes (The Man Who Cried)
03. The Distance Between
04. Postcards from the Sky: Unfolding Sky
05. The Rain
06. Morning Has Broken
07. Mario
08. Addio Monti (Promessi Sposi)
09. Appalachia Waltz
10. Fujiyama
11. The Desert and the Parched Land
12. Bibo No Aozora
13. Solitude
14. Woman - She Was Waiting for Her Mother at the Station in Torino and You Know I Love You Baby but It's Getting Too Heavy to Laugh