Category: Contemporary

ULYSSES ARTS AND ABLAZE RECORDS LAUNCH NEW DISTRIBUTION PARTNERSHIP FROM SEPTEMBER 2021

24/9/2021

Released on 8 October 2021

Ulysses Arts is delighted to be working with leading US-based contemporary classical music label Ablaze Records to manage digital distribution of its extensive catalogue of orchestral, choral and chamber music recordings. The partnership starts with a series of re-releases of Ablaze recordings on 24 September and 1 October 2021, then Othmar Schoeck's song cycle Das stille Leuchten, on 8 October, with mezzo-soprano Clara O'Brien and pianist James Douglass.

James Ross, Ulysses Arts' director, comments: 'Ablaze Records is one of the world's most innovative classical label, whose catalogue is a treasury of contemporary composers' works. Ablaze's mission aligns strongly with our wish to present classical music as a living, evolving art-form and to support today's composers to create a new generation of great works for us to perform and hear. We are looking forward hugely to helping Ablaze to widen its digital reach to listeners on a huge range of digital platforms, and to help the composers it records to maximise their visibility worldwide.'

New Release: 7 January 2022: Douglas Knehans, Cloud Ossuary

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24 September 2021 Releases

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Releasing in November and December 2021

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CARITAS CHAMBER CHOIR AND BENEDICT PREECE RELEASE CROSSING THE BAR - MUSIC FOR REFLECTION AND HOPE

20/9/2021

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Released on 19 November 2021:

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Ulysses Arts released two singles from Crossing the Bar - Music for Reflection and Hope, performed by the Caritas Chamber Choir directed by Benedict Preece. The first single, O Nata Lux by Philip Stopford, releases on 1 October, followed by Crossing the Bar, by Benedict Preece, on 22 October, on Apple Music/iTunes, Spotify, Qobuz, HDtracks and all other major digital service providers.

O Nata Lux is a world première recording from Philip Stopford, one of the most celebrated contemporary choral composers. It is conducted by Benedict Preece, who featured on Ulysses Arts' 2020 J.S. Bach horn and organ album with Anneke Scott. This calm but powerful work takes us from darkness to light, a theme of Advent, when this piece would normally be sung. It has musical elements that hark back to the familiar version of the same text by Thomas Tallis.

Benedict Preece writes about his motet Crossing the Bar:

'Written in 2016 as a gift to Gothenburg's HagaMotettkör for collaboration with Caritas Chamber Choir, I chose to create deliberately simple hymnlike music to allow this most powerful poem to remain the listener's focus. The 'aw' section, sung by lower voices, is intended to represent the sea. The work builds to an almighty climax: “I hope to see my pilot face to face” before finishing with an echo of the “sea”, this time as a hum, which depicts crossing the bar from this life to what comes next.'

iTunes

Crossing the Bar (album)

O Nata Lux

Crossing the Bar (single)

High definition sound on Qobuz

Crossing the Bar (album)

O Nata Lux

Crossing the Bar (single)

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STEPHEN HORNE LAUNCHES SILENT SIRENS - SOLO PIANO MUSIC INSPIRED BY SILENT FILM

1/3/2021

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Download on iTunes with digital booklet or stream on Apple Music: click above

Ulysses Arts launched Silent Sirens, an album of music composed and performed by Stephen Horne, on 9 July 2021. One of the world's leading silent film performers, Stephen Horne is pianist in residence at the British Film Institute at London's Southbank Centre.

Silent Sirens is on all main streaming and download services including Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, YouTube, Qobuz and HDtracks.

Stephen Horne comments: 'I have been a silent film pianist and composer for over thirty years. What began as an intriguing musical sideline developed gradually into a full-time nomadic career, accompanying more than a thousand films in more than twenty countries. During that time I developed hundreds of musical themes and it has long been my ambition to record an album, incorporating some of these into musical pieces.

The tracks on this album are intended to stand alone from the films by which they were initially inspired. However, most of these films have two things in common. Firstly, they share a certain haunting quality, leaving unanswered questions to reverberate in the viewer’s mind long after ‘The End’. Secondly, at least for me, the strongest impression is made by the films’ leading women – the actresses and their roles. Combining these two elements suggested the theme of Silent Sirens.

While the music of Silent Sirens stands on its own, in general terms inspiration has come from The First Born, The Manxman, Varieté, The Informer, Tonka of the Gallows, Menilmontant, Stella Dallas, L'Hirondelle et La Mésange and Visages d’Enfants. For those who are interested, some of the titles are taken directly from the films’ inter-titles. A couple of the pieces are purely personal, with no connection to any film.'

Read Stephen Horne's interview about his album in Silent London.

STEPHEN HORNE SINGLE RELEASES

Beyond The Trees

Miles Mander’s The First Born was co-written by Alfred Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville, which may explain its startlingly Hitchcockian elements. Madeline Carroll’s lead protagonist has a yearning quality, as she misguidedly tries to hold on to her unworthy husband’s love, by giving him the child he craves more than anything.

Will You Wait?

The melody of ‘Will You Wait?’ was originally the love theme in my score for Hitchcock’s film ‘The Manxman’. The title is taken from a pivotal moment in the romantic triangle at the centre of its story. Pete Quilliam has always loved Kate Cregeen, but she secretly desires his best friend Philip Christian. On the eve of leaving to make his fortune in America, Pete asks Kate ‘Will You Wait?’ Blithely thinking that he will never return, she says "Yes Pete, I’ll wait."

Faces of Children

Faces of Children is inspired by 1925 French film Visages d'enfants – one of the most haunting portrayals of childhood ever made. Despite the perfectly rendered happy ending, what lingers is the impression of a child’s struggle to comprehend bereavement. The melody of my piece originally accompanied the final scene, when the boy protagonist stares into a churning river, contemplating oblivion.

DOWNLOAD SILENT SIRENS ON QOBUZ IN HIGH DEFINITION SOUND WITH DIGITAL BOOKLET

DOWNLOAD SILENT SIRENS ON ITUNES OR STREAM ON APPLE MUSIC

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LOUTH CONTEMPORARY MUSIC LAUNCHES EMBERS - WORLD PREMIÈRES FOR STRINGS BY VALENTIN SILVESTROV AND RAYMOND DEANE - ON 5 MARCH 2021

28/1/2021

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Click above to download Embers on iTunes

Embers

While the Pandemic persists in making regular concerts impossible, the Louth Contemporary Music Society continues its work in the studio. Last autumn’s CD release Meadow, featuring music by Linda Catlin Smith, won praise from leading critics on both sides of the Atlantic, including Alex Ross in The New Yorker. Now comes a follow-up, Embers - three world première recordings again devoted to music for strings – instruments that, in their intimacy, seem to touch our moment.

In Samuel Beckett's radio play Embers, the main character stands at the sea shore, sifting through fragments of memory and story that are still living embers, hot to the touch. So it is in this recording, in which music by distinguished Irish composer Raymond Deane supports robustly an important quartet by one of the great masters of our age, Valentin Silvestrov.

Raymond Deane

The opener, Deane’s Marthiya, is named after a form of Middle Eastern lament. It was composed in the wake of the 2003 Iraq invasion. The music’s 'atmosphere of mourning', Deane writes, is 'not unrelated to the devastation wreaked on Iraq since 2003, and to the wider carnage inflicted upon the Arab and Islamic world'.

Deane’s other contribution is the title track, written thirty years earlier but with the same recognisable voice. Though perhaps more questioning than elegiac, Embers is music again on the edge of tears. Ideas, bits of tune, come and go, and recur, very much as things come and go, and come back once more, like in Beckett's play. To quote the composer: 'The piece obsessively turns over musical fragments which seem to have some remote but uncertain origin.'

Valentin Silvestrov

Silvestrov’s music gives voice to the sense we may all feel of being bereft, left behind by what was once a social culture of sympathy and togetherness. Listening to his Third String Quartet, composed in 2011, we seem to be watching from the dock as a great ocean liner slowly slides away, taking with it our hopes and our dreams. Something of this feeling of being on the sidelines of history may come from the composer’s inheritance as a Ukrainian. Ireland, he notes, is not so far away: 'I believe there is some Irish accent, and some simple melodies, that permeate the whole work and may sound as symbols of this wonderful country, in whose destiny and historical legacy I perceive a close spiritual affinity to Ukraine, my homeland.'

All three works are captured in intense, poignant performances by leading ensembles: Crash (Marthiya) and the Carducci Quartet (Embers; Silvestrov, String Quartet No.3).

Embers releases on 5 March 2021 on CD, iTunes/Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Qobuz and all main digital service providers. It is the world première recording of Silvestrov, String Quartet No.3, Deane's Marthiya and of the string quartet (original) version of Deane's Embers, which has been released previously in its subsequent string orchestra version by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in 2016.

Buy the CD
Download on iTunes
Stream on Spotify
Stream on Deezer
High definition download from Presto Music

Louth Contemporary Music Society is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and financially supported by Create Louth. Cover image: 'Grotto' by David Quinn, used with kind permission of the artist.

LOUTH CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PROFILE

Richard Fairman: 'Louth - Ireland's Hidden Gem of a Festival'
The Financial Times

EMBERS REVIEWS

'Rallying After The Silence', Brendan Finan, The Journal of Music

'Engaging and affecting, it’s a grower ... immaculately produced and designed ... When lockdown eases, I’m Louthward bound.' Graham Rickson, The Arts Desk

'A program of great coherence. ... Superb release from a label we here on our side of the big lake wish to know a lot more soon.' Frédéric Cardin, Pan M 360

'Haunting, unsettling evocations of the past', Michael Devlin, The Irish Times

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LAURA CATRANI SINGS LA CASA AND MADRIGALE BY MICHELE TADINI, RELEASING ON 18 DECEMBER 2020

28/11/2020

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Click here to download on iTunes

Ulysses Arts releases Michele Tadini's contemporary vocal works La Casa and Madrigale, with all parts sung by Laura Catrani, and electronic sampling by the composer. Michele Tadini comments:

'La Casa and Madrigale are built substantially on Laura Catrani's voice,: the recordings, sampling and processing of the voice give total life to the sound palette. La Casa (The House) represents our most intimate space, the heart of our existence. Madrigale is a song, of sorrow and hope. At the origins of these pieces there is a broader work: Unheimlich - exiles in their own land, a variable score for sound and image, female voice, percussion, electronics, first performed at Mittelfest, Cividale del Friuli, in 2002.'

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ULYSSES ARTS AND ABLAZE RECORDS LAUNCH NEW DISTRIBUTION PARTNERSHIP FROM SEPTEMBER 2021

CARITAS CHAMBER CHOIR AND BENEDICT PREECE RELEASE CROSSING THE BAR - MUSIC FOR REFLECTION AND HOPE

STEPHEN HORNE LAUNCHES SILENT SIRENS - SOLO PIANO MUSIC INSPIRED BY SILENT FILM

LOUTH CONTEMPORARY MUSIC LAUNCHES EMBERS - WORLD PREMIÈRES FOR STRINGS BY VALENTIN SILVESTROV AND RAYMOND DEANE - ON 5 MARCH 2021

LAURA CATRANI SINGS LA CASA AND MADRIGALE BY MICHELE TADINI, RELEASING ON 18 DECEMBER 2020

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