India Gailey & Leah Plave – The Way Appears
India Gailey & Leah Plave unveil a uniquely collaborative new collection of music for two cellos, The Way Appears — out on CD, digital, and Dolby Atmos via Redshift Records.
Rather than hewing to the standard template of soloist plus accompaniment, typical of cello duos, the program of commissions highlights the strong individual voices of both players. The result is a batch of vivid duos that celebrate the visceral joy, creative power, and social necessity of cooperation. Composers took their inspiration from the concept of emergence, a phenomenon seen widely in nature where the individual parts of a system work together to exhibit complex behaviour they could not accomplish on their own: from the synchronicity of flocking birds and the fractal symmetry of snowflakes to the self-organized structures of political movements.
By pairing Gailey’s knack for poetic, post-minimalist soundscapes with Plave’s cross-cultural, genre-fluid approach, the duo transforms the pairing of two cellos into an expressive, deeply resonant dialogue that bridges distinct corners of the modern experimental landscape. – Bob Osborne, Different Noises
The album marks a decade of friendship between Gailey and Plave, who share a dedication to inclusive representation, a healthy skepticism toward the rigidity of their formal training, and a passion for evolving the tradition of classical music. Featuring a roster of composers mostly drawn from the Canadian contemporary classical music community, The Way Appears includes new works from Adam Vincent Clarke, Cris Derksen, Emily Kennedy, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Matthias McIntire, Kelly-Marie Murphy, and Jeff Reilly. Composer Cris Derksen, the innovative Indigenous cellist, passed away suddenly earlier this year. India and Leah are honoured to present her piece “The Bee and Her Wildflower” on the album as one of her final gifts.
Named by CBC as one of “30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30,” India Gailey’s most recent album of her own compositions, Butterfly Lightning Shakes the Earth (2024), earned an East Coast Music award for Composer of the Year and a Juno nomination for Classical Album of the Year in 2025. Problematica (2024) and To you through (2022) also received widespread acclaim. She has toured throughout the Western hemisphere as a soloist, chamber musician, and collaborator, often working directly with living composers including Philip Glass, Yaz Lancaster, Amy Brandon, Fjóla Evans, Michael Harrison, Nicole Lizée, and Julia Mermelstein. Leah Plave has lived and toured extensively across North America, China, and Europe, and is currently based in the Netherlands. As a member of Pi Quartet, she performs music exclusively by living composers from all over the world. Her 2020 album Impressions: The Rediscovery of Henriette Bosmans, hailed as “a revelation” (Limelight), revived the unjustly forgotten work of the Dutch composer and pianist, whose music was banned by the Nazi regime.
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