CD Review | Stravinsky: Sankofa, The Soldier’s Tale Retold

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Stravinsky: Sankofa, The Soldier’s Tale Retold & Histoire du soldat Suite

Art of Time Ensemble; Andrew Burashko, musical director  

Leaf Music, 2026

Sankofa takes the music and the basic plot of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat and reframes it as the story of a young man of African heritage trying to join the Canadian army in Nova Scotia in 1914. Titilope Sonuga’s English-language libretto keeps the basic rhyming couplet structure of the original as well as the interactions with the Devil in multiple guises and it works really well. The piece was performed, in a fully staged version, by Art of Time Ensemble and actors at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto in October 2024 and now it has been recorded for digital audio release with a bonus of Stravinsky’s suite derived from the work.

I saw the live stage show and was deeply moved by it. The experience, audio only, is different but equally effective. Lack of visual distraction puts the focus on Sonuga’s clever libretto and the excellent performances. The narrator, Ordena Stephens-Thompson, introduces us to the young man’s background with his Ghanaian warrior roots and a desire to show that he’s as good a fighter as any in what, he is told, is a “white man’s war.”

Our soldier, voiced by Olaoluwa Fayokun, has multiple encounters with the Devil from whom he acquires a magic fiddle in exchange for his totemic bird token, Sankofa. Eventually he does enlist but only in a labour battalion. Britain, France and even Germany may field combat soldiers of colour, but not racially pure Canada! Throughout, Fayokun displays great dignity and veteran actor Diego Matamoros offers a wonderfully nuanced portrait of the Devil in his different forms.

For the stage show, Andrew Burashko directed an ensemble of excellent young musicians from The Glenn Gould School. Here he has a professional lineup of Benjamin Bowman (violin), Eric Abramovitz (clarinet), Amy Horvey (trumpet), Robert Conquer (trombone), Kris Maddigan (percussion), Joseph Phillips (double bass) and Thomas Roy Rochette (bassoon), with Waleed Abdulhamid on prerecorded talking drum. They are unsurprisingly excellent and produce a brisk and incisive account of Stravinsky’s jaunty score, both in the “play” and in the suite.

Sankofa was recorded at Revolution Recording in Toronto in March 2025. The suite was recorded at Desert Fish Studios in April. I listened to the 96kkHz/24 bit version and it’s excellent in both cases, with great clarity and presence. It’s a digital-only release with lossless 44.1kHz/16 bit and MP3 also offered. There’s an excellent bilingual booklet explaining the origin of the project in some detail.

Bottom line, this is a very well done realisation of Sankofa and is highly recommended.

This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en: Français (French)