With their goofy name and playfully garish album artwork, Tönky Hönk may initially come off as a novelty. Still, these two brilliant musicians channel their unique, multifaceted keyboard skills into one of the most unexpectedly moving and instantly enjoyable experimental music releases in recent memory.
Madeline Hildebrand and Everett Hopfner are both accomplished pianists, each past prize winners of Canada’s Eckhardt-Gramatte National Music Competition. Both have a long history of performing with the likes of Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet, among others. Hildebrand is a member of Memorial University’s Music Faculty in St. John’s, Newfoundland, while Hopfner was the former director of the Eckhardt-Gramatte Conservatory of Music at Brandon University. With their debut release, The ËP, they aim to champion the music of contemporary composers.
Hildebrand and Hopfner play a variety of keyboards on the EP, eschewing synthesizers in favor of other electric and acoustic instruments: Fender Rhodes, toy piano, music boxes, metal bowls, and grand piano (both prepared and conventional). Here, they interpret compositions by Adrian Knight, Phyllis Chen, and Julian Beutel. Knight’s multi-part composition, “Twinlings”, opens the record in four parts, and then closes it with the remaining three parts. The multi-part composition that bookends the EP focuses on luxurious, deliberately paced chords executed on a gently pulsing electric piano (probably a Fender Rhodes) that resembles warm, open mallet percussion notes more than traditional keyboard sounds.
Meanwhile, Chen’s compositional contribution, “Hush”, is more eccentric, with most of the song played on a noisy toy piano and sonic traces that resemble gamelan, as the tune straddles the line between unusual and exotic. The recording combines rebellious clatter with the atonal magic of contemporary classical.
Beutel’s composition, “Jam Factory”, is neatly divided into two sections, one subtitled “[machine: v.21]” and the other “[rain: v.17]”. These descriptions are particularly apt – the former rolls along in a disciplined type of march tempo, with electric and acoustic pianos stacking melodies on top of each other, with a mechanical fervor resembling the compositional work of Steve Reich. The latter part has a sketchy, desultory feel, ethereal in nature, with an overall mood that seems to mimic a lazy, rainy day (the blurry noise in the song’s middle section may indicate a brief storm amidst the drizzle).
Overall, The ËP is a striking, unique piece of music from two accomplished musicians, bringing an oddly comforting warmth, along with a healthy dose of idiosyncrasies, to modern, keyboard-based instrumental music.