The world première recording of Andrew Smith's Old Irish Blessing, performed by Caritas Chamber Choir with soprano Catherine Futcher, directed by Benedict Preece, is released by Ulysses Arts on 15 March 2024, in partnership with Platoon. This single is the first pre-release for a new album of contemporary choral music launching in summer 2024.

Andrew Smith (b. 1970) is a British-Norwegian composer with a growing international reputation for choral and vocal music that links tradition with a contemporary idiom. 

He read Music and English at the University of Oslo. Composing, a hobby since the age of eight, began in earnest in the late 1990s when he wrote a piece for the newly-formed Trio Mediaeval (Norway). The subsequent recording of this and other music for the Trio brought Andrew to the attention of the American audience and led the way to collaborations with groups such as New York Polyphony, Khorikos Chamber Choir and Gothic Voices.

Andrew’s Requiem, composed for the Nidaros Cathedral Girls’ Choir in response to the tragic events in Norway in July 2011, was first performed in Trondheim in 2012. The work features on the Nidaros Cathedral Girls Choir album LUX, awarded a Grammy for Best Immersive Audio Album in January 2020.

Andrew has been commissioned and performed by numerous choirs in Norway and abroad. Recent commissions include Lukaspasjon, a setting in Norwegian of the Passion according to St. Luke for Oslo Cathedral Choir, and O Antiphons for the Khorikos Chamber Choir in New York, first performed in 2019.

Andrew Smith’s music is published principally by Norsk Musikforlag, with some works published by Oxford University Press.

Lyrita Records releases Cyril Scott, Piano Sonata No. 1, performed by Simon Callaghan, on 5 April 2024.

Sonata for Piano Op. 66: composed 1908; revised edition from 1930s

'Cyril Meir Scott (1879-1970) is one of a group of British composers to have benefitted from three cultural features of recent decades: increased curiosity from performers and listeners; a more inclusive outlook from musicologists and critics; and the music industry spotting a gap and a demand. A much more colourful picture of British music in the first half of the twentieth century has resulted.

Scott was a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction as well as a composer of several hundred pieces. His writings and music are deeply invested in mysticism and the occult. This element in Scott’s work, as Sarah Collins has noted, helps us to see beyond received notions of Scott as either a trivial exoticist or an unjustly-neglected pioneer, and to appreciate his music on its own terms.' ©Brian A. Ingis

'Strongly recommended'.
Kevin Mandry, British Music Society, 14 March 2024

'Back into the light'
Maureen Buja,Interlude, 8 April 2024

Simon Callaghan performs internationally as a soloist and chamber musician, in parallel with a successful recording career. Simon Callaghan’s distinguished and eclectic discography includes recordings for Hyperion, Nimbus and Lyrita, among others. He is heard regularly on BBC Radio 3 and on multiple streaming platforms: his most recent single on Apple Music with Coco Tomita
surpassing one million streams in its first month of release.

He is a strong social media enthusiast, using it to promotion for classical music in general and seeing it as a particular tool in his advocacy of the rare and unexplored. He is Director of Music at London’s celebrated Conway Hall, only the sixth incumbent since the Series's foundation in 1887. He was elected a Steinway Artist in 2012.

Eletronic press kit for press reviewiers available from Ulysses Arts.

Lyrita Records releases George Lloyd's complete symphonies and other orchestral works, conducted by the composer, on 1 March (SRCD.2417) and 5 April 2024 (SRCD.2418).

'Lloyd became a symphonist despite himself. When he was in his twenties he seemed destined to be a composer of operas and it is likely that, had the vicissitudes of war not intervened, he would have written music for the stage exclusively. In an article for the June 1939 issue of the Musical Monthly Record, Harry Farjeon wondered why music for Lloyd was ‘not centred in the concert hall but in the theatre’ and quoted the young composer as being ‘interested only in opera’.

There are strong traces in the symphonies of what might have been: the intensely lyrical, cantabile nature of the writing; the intermezzo-like movements; the opera buffa qualities of the finales and the feeling for the long line which runs through those supple and sweeping melodies all denote a born opera composer. In the event, his operatic aspirations were cruelly cut short and it is to his courageous, life-affirming twelve symphonies that we must look to chart his development, recovery and eventual triumph.' © Paul Conway

Jean-Yves Duperron, Classical Music Sentinel
Symphonies Vol. 1, March 2024
Symphonies Vol. 2, April 2024

Electronic press kit available for reviewiers from Ulysses Arts.

Nimbus Alliance releases Augusta Read Thomas's Terpsichore’s Box of Dreams and other world prèmiere recordings on 5 April 2024.

Augusta Read Thomas writes:

'I am eternally grateful to the entire Nimbus Records team. Music for me is an embrace of the world, a way to open myself to being alive in the world--in my body, in my sounds, and in my mind. I care deeply about musicality, imagination, craft, clarity, dimensionality, an elegant balance between material and form, and empathy with the performing musicians, recording engineers, as well as everyone who works in the presenting organizations.'
 
'Collaborating with the artists whose performances are on this recording has been one of the most exhilarating experiences of my creative life. It is difficult to express how grateful I am to the many extraordinary colleagues who have made this possible. It is pure magic -- deeply rewarding, fun, and sincere.'

'Previous instalments in this long-running survey of Augusta Read Thomas's œuvre have ranged far and wide within a catalogue that spans some 30 years to date. In contrast, we explore here a variety of works of more immediately recent vintage - the earliest dates from 2018.  Between them, they fill out a vividly-coloured snapshot of Thomas' irrepressible current compositional persona. Many of her long-standing preoccupations are to be found in this collection: love of dance which propels the music into a tirelessly evolving voyage in both rhythmic and narrative terms; the iridescent, bell-saturated sonic environment that fills her musical landscapes with light and clarity; the sense of jazz auras acting as guiding spirits propelling the music on its course with its restless, hocketing rhythms and penetrating harmonic flavours; a celebration and understanding of instrumental virtuosity; the overall sense of her music engaged in a deep-seated interaction between the present and the past.' © Paul Pellay

Augusta Read Thomas

The New Yorker called her “a true virtuoso composer.” Critic Edward Reichel wrote, “Thomas has secured for herself a permanent place in the pantheon of American composers of the 20th and 21st Centuries. She is without question one of the best and most important composers that this country has today. Her music has substance, depth, and a sense of purpose. She has a lot to say and knows how to say it—and in a way that is intelligent yet appealing and sophisticated.”

Album Contents and Performers

TERPSICHORE’S BOX OF DREAMS 18:18
For flute (picc.), oboe, clarinet (bass clarinet), alto saxophone (baritone sax.), horn, 2 percussionists, harp, piano, 2 violins, viola, and 'cello (2023)
Grossman Ensemble;  Tim Weiss, conductor

1. Terpsichore Enters: 1:15
2. Dance No. 1 Scatter: 2:01
3. Dance No. 2 Tiptoe Caper: 1:11
4. Dance No. 3 Pointillistic Groove Flutter Pirouettes: 1:46
5. Dance No. 4 Slalom: 1:25
6. Dance No. 5 Dream: 5:09
7. Dance No. 6 Gambol: 2:37
8. Dance No. 7 Romp: 1:59
9. Terpsichore Departs: 0:45

10. STAR BOX
For percussion quartet or percussion ensemble (2020): 6:20
John Corkill, Ian Ding, Kyle Flens, Cynthia Yeh

11. DANCE MOBILE
For 13 players or small chamber orchestra (2021): 14:31
Grossman Ensemble. Stefan Asbury, conductor

12. LAETITIA’S CAPRICE
For solo soprano saxophone (2023): 3:03
Phil Pierick, soprano saxophone

13. CARNIVAL for bassoon and wind ensemble (2022): 12:37
State University of New York Fredonia Wind Ensemble; Nadina Mackie Jackson, bassoon
Paula Holcomb, conductor

14. BEBOP RIDDLE II for cello and piano (2022): 7:12
Alexander Hersh, 'cello. Tom Hicks, piano

15. CON MOTO for percussion quartet (2018): 7:28
John Corkill, Adam Rosenblatt, Garrett Arney, Nonoka Mizukami

CLICK BELOW TO DOWNLOAD OR STREAM:

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QOBUZ

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Lyrita Records releases Christopher Brown, 24 Preludes and Fugues (SRCD.2431), with pianist Nathan Williamson, on 2 February 2024.

Christopher Brown writes: 'I set myself the challenge of writing a book of 24 Peludes and Fugues in all the major and minor keys and I approached family, friends, and several institutions I had been associated with, to commission a prelude and fugue each, with many of the resultant commissioners asking for references to pieces of music that had a special meaning for them, a request that I tried to follow through wherever possible.

The project took me eight years to complete, and it was not until 2019 that I finally put the finishing touches to the concluding B minor Fugue. The score was published on my birthday in June 2020 and I received an unexpected email from Nathan Williamson, saying that he would love to learn the music, and, because of the restrictions imposed by Covid lockdowns, it might be a good time to see if a complete recording might be contemplated. To our delight, Lyrita Recorded Edition agreed to take on the project, leading to the release of the present boxed set.'

'Very early in the planning process I had decided that the set would be divided into four books, each made up of six Preludes and Fugues, based around one of the notes of the name BACH (B flat, A, C and B natural in German notation), and starting and ending in the major or the minor tonality of the four keys. In addition I wanted to reference the cryptogram of Dmitri Shostakovich (DSCH – D, E flat, C and B), whose own masterly set of 24 Preludes and Fugues also casts its influence across my set.'

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