“Selene” finds English guitarist-composer Martin Lloyd Howard gazing skyward and turning moonlight into melody. Trained in the classical tradition but well-traveled through folk, blues, and rock, Howard usually splits his time between electric textures and acoustic ensembles. Here, though, he strips everything back to a single, 50-year-old hand-built classical guitar and a singular vision, to form a moonscape inspired by a painting created by his wife, named for the ancient Greek goddess of the moon. Cast in the less common guitar key of G minor, “Selene” leans into shadows and silver light brought on through the slivers of silhouettes that mesmerize through their lucid, silky sharpness.
The piece opens with gentle, soothing chords, but they don’t fall into a neat grid. They arrive in a conversational, slightly arhythmic flow—hesitating, spilling forward, circling back—as if something is slowly evolving or being poured out in real time. It’s the sound of a mind thinking aloud through the fretboard. Before long, the harmony deepens, and Howard threads in more intricate voicings and melodic fragments, like thin clouds sliding across a pale, luminous moon.
As the music unfolds, phrases swell and recede in long, breath-like arcs. He lets notes ring into one another, creating a soft halo of resonance that feels almost visual, like light bleeding at the edges of a frame. There are moments of tension, where the G minor tonality feels cool and distant, followed by tiny releases—a major inflection here, a tender cadence there—that hint at warmth beneath the nocturnal surface.
Howard never resorts to flash for its own sake; the virtuosity is in the control, the timing, the restraint. By the closing bars, “Selene” has done exactly what it set out to do. It evokes pale, bright moonlight with restless clouds scudding past, leaving you suspended between calm and unease, night and a hint of dawn.
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Review by: Naomi Joan