Fascinating dualities abound on Reverie, a mesmerizing album by Rebecca Foon and Aliayta Foon-Dancoes released this past spring. First there are the musical paths the sisters each have forged for themselves – Rebecca, a cellist with three decades of composing and performing post-rock, experimental, and neoclassical music both on her own and as part of acclaimed bands such as Esmerine and A Silver Mt. Zion as well as collaborating with an array of musical legends, and Aliayta, composer, performer, and commissioner of classical and modern repertoire who studied at the Royal Academy and Royal College of Music in London and pursues a Composition PhD at Princeton University. Then there is the album itself which mourns ecologic and climatological disaster even as it sings the beauty of the nature those forces can devastate.
Though the sisters have performed together before, Reverie is their first full-length studio collaboration, and it is one that intertwines two potent musical voices into something quite stunning. The genesis of the album traces back to a series of sessions held in Lost River, Rebecca’s converted barn studio in the Laurentian mountains of Québec. The music spanning its eleven tracks is built on a framework of improvisation and repetition with melodic themes coursing like a river through a varied landscape of atmospheres and tonalities. It may be pensive and mournful at times, but when it rises, it does so with virtuosic intensity yielding moments of delirious, breathtaking beauty. Ultimately, Reverie can be seen as both a sorrowful lamentation for what has been or may be lost and a fervent call to hope for the future.
Reverie was released on April 18, 2025, by Constellation Records on CD and vinyl LP as well as digital & streaming. The album was recorded & mixed by Jace Lasek and mastered by Ryan Morey. The album cover and inserts feature photography by Rebecca Foon.
Links: Bandcamp (LP/CD/digital) | Listen/Buy | Rebecca Foon | Aliayta Foon-Dancoes
