New CD: Newcastle New Music
CETL is proud to present a new CD of contemporary music by three of Newcastle University’s composers on the staff of ICMuS and three current or recently graduated PhD students.
The performers are the iconoclastic Mr McFall’s Chamber, a leading ensemble based in Edinburgh and celebrated for its innovative explorations of intersections between contemporary genres.
Kathryn Tickell’s Lordenshaws provides the opening track. Originally written to a commission from the ensemble Vaganza, the work sees the celebrated Northumbrian piper and composer exploring larger-scale structures to evoke the haunting beauty of an enigmatic location on the Simonside Hills.
Tim Garland’s In Translation was co-commissioned by Mr McFall’s Chamber and trombonist John Aram. In this version the work features Garland’s superb artistry on the bass clarinet as an improvised part interacting with a piano quintet.
Agustín Fernández’s Botanic Spider highlights the virtuosity of the five soloists, treating them now as an entangled web in constant expansion, now as obsessive carriers of passacaglia variations, now as fierce competitors in the pyrotechnical finale.
Matthew Rowan’s String Quartet No 1 is a model of creative discipline in an ingeniously disguised sequence of variations, culminating in an energetic finale which exemplifies his interest in repetition and variation.
Sergio Camacho’s offering, Four Names for the One Moon, presents some thematic material from the composer’s ambitious project of a contemporary zarzuela, creating four atmospheric vignettes with a subtle Spanish colour.
Joel Eriksson closes the CD with his Fantasi, an admirably crafted arrangement of his original piece for organ, loosely but lovingly based on a chorale melody by JS Bach.
For more information see project page Inspiration, Interactivity and Innovation in Creative Practice.
