Ulysses Arts released Caritas Chamber Choir's album A New Spirit, with world premières by Sir James MacMillan, Henrik Dahlgren, Phillip Cooke and Andrew Smith, directed by Benedict Preece, on 18 October 2024 (UA240110).

A NEW SPIRIT: ALBUM DETAILS

Phillip Cooke, Christus resurgens
 
Henrik Dahlgren, Three Latin Hymns:
Ave maris Stella
Ave Regina Caelorum
Ave Maria
 
Sir James MacMillian, If ye love me

Sir James MacMillan, For a thousand years

Phillip Cooke, Veni Sponsa Christi
 
Sir James MacMillan,  I will take you from the nations

Phillip Cooke, O Lord, save thy people
 
Sir James MacMillan, Be who God meant you to be
Sir James MacMillan, The Highgate Motet

Andrew Smith, Christi tractus in odore

Andrew Smith, Rex et martyr triumphalis
 
 Andrew Smith, Old Irish Blessing

Maureen Buja, Interlude, 2 Dec 2024

'Congratulations to Benedict Preece and his singers for producing such a nicely balanced anthology with exemplary notes, texts and presentation.'
Malcolm Riley, Gramophone, Dec 2024

Based in Kent, in south east England, Caritas Chamber Choir was founded in 2011 by music director Benedict Preece. Caritas is the Latin word for charity: as part of its concert schedule, the Choir raises funds for charities, good causes and churches. Performing to the highest level throughout the UK, the Choir has also performed in Belgium, France - including regularly at Lille Cathedral's summer music festival, The Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. Caritas has a strong commitment to contemporary choral music: it performs and commissions music from many of the leading composers of our time, including Sir James MacMillan, Cecilia McDowall, Phillip Stopford, Phillip Cooke, Andrew Smith, Sarah Cattley, David Conte, Gabriel Jackson, Neil Wright, Eric Choate and Henrik Dahgren. Caritas is signed with UK-based record label Ulysses Arts.

Electronic press kit and pre-release listening link available for press reviewers and radio producers.

UA240110
Producer: Emily Baines
Recording Engineer: John Croft - Chiaro Audio
Artwork: Tony Garrett

Alex Heffes re-releases his album Face to Face (PLAT14823) on 7 October 2022, re-mixed in stereo and Dolby Atmos, and with new material, including for the first time on many digital sites: click here to discover more.

Face To Face is an album by Alex Heffes featuring collaborations with Matthew Barley, Tunde Jegede, Kawesa, Yasmin Levy, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Regina Spektor. Each track was improvised from scratch on the day of recording and features Alex on keyboards with one guest. Sessions were recorded in a series of spectacular locations including the giant ‘Turbine Hall’ of the Tate Gallery in London at night time (Matthew Barley), an empty glass roofed warehouse in the Bronx (Regina Spektor), Abbey Road’s legendary Studio 2 (Tunde Jegede) and on a hilltop overlooking Uganda’s capital city Kampala (Kawesa).

Alex comments: 'For years people asked me many variations of one particular question: “Where does your inspiration as a composer come from?” This inspired me to make a record - one that was entirely improvised - nothing prepared in advance. I chose six inspiring collaborators to record in six inspiring locations. My task: to commit to whatever happened in that space on that day, and make a piece of music. Face To Face is my answer to this question."

Why now? The 2022 mix celebrates ten years since the original release. The album has been fully re-mixed and mastered in stereo and Dolby Atmos to immerse the listener even more vividly into the atmosphere of the original sessions. The bonus track ‘Helios Rising’ has been newly included on the 2022 mix from the Abbey Road / Tunde Jegede sessions.

Face To Face was recorded and mixed by Grammy winning engineer and producer Peter Henderson and was captured on photo and film by photographer Rama Knight.

Alex Heffes on Apple Music Classical playlists

Face to Face is distributed by Platoon.

More streaming links for the album and for pre-release singles will be posted here.

US-based contemporary classical label Ablaze Records releases Orchestral Masters Vol. 8 on 11 March 2022 with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Robert Kružík, and Tremor, featuring double bass soloist Robert Nairn, on 18 March 2022, in partnership with Ulysses Arts.

QOBUZ

ORCHESTRAL MASTERS VOL. 8

TREMOR

Ulysses Arts releases German composerJohannes Schlecht's album Ich spiele noch on Friday 4 March 2022, with Landeskapelle Eisenach (now Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach) conducted by Wolfgang Wappler and Tetsuro Ban, soprano Susann Möbius-Huss and 'cellist Grita Bühler.

Johannes Schlecht comments:

'At some point, many years ago, I had my first contact with poet Rose Ausländer during a night drive. On the radio. I heard her talk about herself andher exciting, fulfilling life, I heard her read from her poems. Her voice sounded cheerful and lovable, friendly and comforting, modest and humble, amazed and hopeful, curious and lively. This voice came from a woman who had been bed-ridden for years, sick, in a Jewish old people’s home in Düsseldorf. I was impressed and touched by the clarity and simplicity of her language and above all, the brevity in which she said the important, essential and necessary. For a long time I had the idea of composing poems by Rose Ausländer, of tracking down the melody of her language and poetry.

For me that means composing by listening to the melody of the language and bringing it to life musically. In this sense, as a composer, I see myself as a creator and mediator. I put my personal, subjective view of poetry up for discussion: I try to provide a comment that brings the word, at best read or spoken, sung to another level of experience and feeling. Understanding the word, initially an ostensibly intellectual means of communication, becomes unimportant. It took me years to tackle Rose Ausländer’s poems. In between, to name just two important works, were the composition of ten songs based on poems by Paul Celan. For this cycle I received the last Hanns-Eisler Composition Prize from GDR Radio in 1989. Paul Celan, just like Rose Ausländer, comes from that melting-pot and centre of Eastern Jewish intellectual life - Cernowitz. I have developed a great affinity for this way of thinking and feeling. And in between there was also the composition of the small volume “DIR”, which was composed and drawn by Heinrich Vogeler, fourteen very soft, tender, sad-melancholy love poems for voice, cello and viola.'

Album Details

Ich spiele noch: Sieben Stücke für Singstimme, Flüte, Oboe, Fagott, Violoncello und Streichorchester nach Texten von Rose Ausländer
Susann Möbius–Huss – Sopran; Landeskapelle Eisenach, Leitung: Wolfgang Wappler

Streichquartett Nr. 1
i. nicht zu schnell
ii. sehr langsam
iii. unglücklicher Walzer mit glücklichem Ausgang
iv. schnell, ausgelassen

Divertimento Streichquartett der Landeskapelle Eisenach:
Simona Balan, Violine; Silvia Peter, Violine; Gheorghe Balan, Viola; Roxana Mereutza, Violoncello

Kommen und Gehen – Orchestermusik für Sophia
i. Sehr ruhig
ii. Ruhige Viertel
iii. Sehr ruhig

Landeskapelle Eisenach, Leitung: Tetsuro Ban

Kommentare zu einem Thema von Max Reger – für Violoncello allein
i. sehr frei, so langsam wie m glich
ii. gehend
iii. sehr ruhig, sempre col legno schnell, hüpfend
iv. sehr langsam
v. gehend
vi. Thema, Largo

Grita Bühler, Violoncello

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Links to download and stream on HDtracks and other service providers will be published here.

CRD Records are delighted to announce the release of Resurrexi! Easter in Vienna with Mozart and the Haydn Brothers on 1 April 2022. Recorded with the The Choir of Keble College Oxford and Instruments of Time & Truth, the album is conducted by Paul Brough. Resurrexi! is CRD’s third album with Keble, following Ceremonial Oxford (2017) and Ave Rex Angelorum (2020).

Resurrexi!, recorded in 2021 in the Victorian splendour of Keble College Chapel, celebrates Easter in music – a full mass sequence based around Mozart’s Spaurmesse K. 258, interspersed with plainchant and a treasury of Viennese classical sacred music by Joseph and Michael Haydn. The result offers an imaginary recreation of an opulent service that might have been heard at Vienna’s Stephansdom, or at the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg’s court.

Ressurexi!’s soloists are Emily Dickens, soprano, Rebekah Jones, mezzo-soprano, Philippe Durrant, tenor and Graham Kirk, baritone and cantor.

‘Resurrexi! is an enticing opportunity to hear some rarely played music in eager and engaging performances. ... An immensely enjoyable recording.' David Threasher, Gramophone Magazine

'This celebration of Easter ... amply succeeds in giving both spiritual and musical satisfaction.'Brian Robins, Early Music Review

'So sweetly done that you’re immediately tempted to hit the replay button.'
Graham Rickson: The Arts Desk - April 2022

Resurrexi in Europadisc's 2022 Easter Highlights

RESURREXI ALBUM LINKS:

iTUNES

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SINGLE PRE-RELEASE FROM RESURREXI

MOZART, REGINA COELI

Jazz pianist Jason Rebello and English vocal ensemble Opus Anglicanum join forces on their album Adorna, released on 28 January 2022 (UA210140) on Apple Music, Spotify, HDtracks, Deezer, Amazon Music, Qobuz, TIDAL, YouTube and all main digital services, and on CD. The track bearing the album's title name was pre-released as a single on 31 December 2021.

Jason Rebello and Opus Anglicanum started their professional career recording and performing in the late 1980s. Opus Anglicanum's world – which embraces a cappella Renaissance polyphony and Gregorian chant, folksong, music hall, contemporary classical vocal commissions and readings from literature and poetry, in fact almost everything but jazz - remained totally different from Jason's. Their home has remained great cathedrals, abbeys, stately homes, or tiny mediaeval parish churches. Then their director Roland Robertson booked Jason to compose major instrumental and choral work, and so came to understand the spiritual richness and artistic breadth of Jason's musicianship.

It was obviously immediately that Jason and Opus Anglicanum shared a common goal: to explore together a mysterious, austere and magical zone, following the ancient paths of ritual and procession, in modes ancient and modern, the piano illuminating and complementing the voices, and exploiting the space.  Together, with barless scores of square mediaeval notes, and tracts of Latin, they began to experiment. This developed into a concert programme  built on chants for the winter feast of Candlemas, first performed in Wells Cathedral. Standing around the nave, empty but for Jason at the Steinway, with five singers in fading January light, the content and setting 'clicked' perfectly. The result is 'Adorna', now enhanced by two original new compositions by Jason, and recorded in live performance.

LIVE PERFORMANCES

WELLS CATHEDRAL: SATURDAY 22 JANUARY 2022
ST MARTIN'S-IN-THE-FIELDS, LONDON: THURSDAY 3 FEBRUARY

The St Martin's-in-the-Fields concert is followed by a Crypt Late jazz performance by Jason Rebello and His Trio - Troy Miller, drums and Orlando Le Fleming, bass.

THAXTED FESTIVAL, ESSEX: 27 JUNE 2022, 7.30PM

LISTEN TO ADORNA

Click to follow JASON REBELLO and OPUS ANGLICANUM on Spotify

PRESS

London Jazz News - interview

London Jazz News - concert review

Jazz Journal, April 2022 (Matthew Wright)

Jazziz Magazine

Classical Music Daily

Jazzwise - April 2022 issue

ADORNA - Pre-Release Single links:

Following the success of Poppy Beddoe's pre-release of J.S. Bach's Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 in D minor, arranged for solo clarinet, which was selected for Spotify's New Classical Releases playlist, Ulysses Arts launches her debut album Soliloquy on 3 December 2021:

ALBUM DETAILS

Poppy Beddoe, clarinet

Partita No. 2 in D minor BMV 1004: I. Allemande
J.S. BACH arr. Beddoe

O Eterne Deus
HILDEGARD VON BINGEN arr. Beddoe

Quatuor pour la fin du temps: III. Abîme des oiseaux
OLIVIER MESSIAEN

Partita No. 2 in D minor BMV 1004: III. Courante
J.S. BACH arr. Beddoe

Lied
LUCIANO BERIO

Partita No. 2 in D minor BMV 1004: V. Ciaconne
J.S. BACH arr. Beddoe

A June Cantilena
MATTHEW TAYLOR

Fantasy for Clarinet
MALCOLM ARNOLD

Three Etudes on Themes of Gershwin:
i. I Got Rhythm
ii. Summertime
iii. It Ain’t Necessarily So
PAUL HARVEY

Download on iTunes with digital booklet

Download on Qobuz in high definition sound

Spotify album link

Deezer album link

 
Amazon Music link

YouTube album link

HDtracks link

Soliloquy on Apple Music Playlists

LISTEN TO J.S. BACH'S CHACONNE ON iTUNES AND APPLE MUSIC

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.'

Mist Waves by Douglas Knehans
Pre-release from Cloud Ossuary album: 3 December 2021

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1gudwIIpTYs1JPcGjVu0ET

Deezer: www.deezer.com/en/album/273169602

YouTube: youtu.be/JHqwuvaMy5s

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

24 September 2021 Releases

Released in October 2021

Released in November and December 2021

Millennial Masters

ELECTRONIC MASTERS

Richard Craig launches the first two single of his complete Telemann Fantasias for Solo Flute on Ulysses Arts, with No. 11 in G Major on 7 May and No. 9 in E Major on 4 June 2021.

Telemann's inspiration for Fantasia No. 11 came from a 1739 visit to Pszczyna in Poland where he heard fiddlers and bagpipers: 'One would hardly believe the inventiveness with which they improvise when the dancers pause for breath'.  Richard Craig writes: 'I imagined a similar scene and relished the challenge of recreating the vivacity of folk musicians and dancers in the twists and turns of my ornamentation.'

STREAMING AND DOWNLOAD LINKS

FOLLOW RICHARD CRAIG ON SPOTIFY

Richard writes about his work and career:

'In my various guises as a new music performer, collaborator, improviser/composer I have played alongside musicians such as Rohan de Saram, Roberto Fabbriciani, Barry Guy, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies and new music groups ELISION, Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, and the RTÉ Orchestra. Closer to home, I have been a guest musician with most of the UK’s new music groups: Welsh ensemble Uproar, and London-based Riot Ensemble, Ensemble Octandre, Explore ensemble, and in Scotland the Hebrides Ensemble and Red Note. I was a founding member of the Spanish group SMASH and Manchester-based Distractfold Ensemble.

Exploring solo performance has been and continues to be an important journey for me. It has led me to develop a distinctive approach to the flute; to re-invigorate older music, as well as exploring improvised and notated contemporary works.

My own compositions are often a series of smaller works under a collective title: the first being Amp/Al for flute/s and feedback (2012-15) and the most recent being Hortulus Animae (2015 – 2019) for flute/s and fixed media. Composing and improvisation are linked to my interests in the visual arts and I also use video and photography in my work.

Alongside my work as a performer, I am also a teacher. I give masterclasses and lead workshops and seminars in chamber music, ensemble performance and flute playing. I was a Visiting Fellow in Performance at theUniversity of Aberdeen 2010–12. In 2015 I was appointed as a lecturer and Head of Performance at Bangor University, Wales, a post I held until 2019; during this time I was also an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield from 2014 to 2019. Outside of academia, I have been invited to teach on courses such as theEstalagem da Ponta do sol residency in Madeira, and also the Distat Terra Academy in Argentina. I received my PhD from Middlesex University in 2020. As a writer I have contributed to publications for Örat, and the Orpheus Institute.

My solo discs INWARD (2011) and VALE (2017) were released on the Métier label: they document my work with composers Esaias Järnegard, Richard Barrett, John Croft, Malin Bång, Brice Pauset, Evan Johnson and Fabrice Fitch. Other recordings of note include the composer John Croft’s monograph disc Seirenes in 2019 (First Hand Records), and two discs with Another Timbre, performing the works of Jürg Frey and Magnus Granberg. I have recorded several albums and live broadcasts for the BBC, WDR Cologne, YLE Finland, Radio France, Radio Nacional de España, Swedish Radio, ARTE, Métier, Another Timbre, FHR, Icelandic RUV, as well as curated releases of repertoire, and my own compositions. In 2021, I will be releasing a re-interpretation of the Telemann Fantasias on the Ulysses Arts label, and composer Oliver Seale’s portrait disc with Scottish label, Delphian.

I studied flute at the RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) with Sheena Gordon and later with Richard Blake. After graduating with honours, I continued my studies at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg, France, with Mario Caroli with support from a Dewar Award and the Scottish International Educational Trust. As well as working with the full range of flutes from contra to piccolo, I play on two Rudall Carte wooden flutes from the early and mid-20th century, restored for me by Arthur Haswell. One of these instruments was originally commissioned by renowned Italian teacher and soloist Alberto Veggetti (1874 – 1948).

I currently live in Edinburgh where I run my own flute studio.'

'To go directly to the matter in hand: the playing on this disc is sensational.'
Johan Svensson, Nutida Musik

'Pushing the instrument to its technical and expressive limits ... a tour de force.'
Tim Ashley, The Guardian

Release Details

Istanbul: UPC 5054526006225
Spotify Album URI: spotify:album:1oK63CV8kF7vi08Wq6PcoE
Spotify Album URL: http://open.spotify.com/album/1oK63CV8kF7vi08Wq6PcoE
Spotify Track URI: spotify:track:35bnyzsI5vcG53NgX0mXb5
Spotify Track URL: http://open.spotify.com/track/35bnyzsI5vcG53NgX0mXb5

iTunes URL: https://music.apple.com/us/album/istanbul-single/1527145833?ls=1&app=itunes
Apple Music URL: https://music.apple.com/us/album/istanbul-single/1527145833?ls=1

Deezer: https://deezer.page.link/jCYjpycCTz5pmLRz6
YouTube: https://youtu.be/wkUefxABUNY

Love's Theme: UPC 5054526005990
Spotify Album URI: spotify:album:6P2MgNgF19MHPNQDUIo6KC
Spotify Album URL: http://open.spotify.com/album/6P2MgNgF19MHPNQDUIo6KC
Spotify Track URI: spotify:track:5GDRi17PXH6mZpQyiLIxgG
Spotify Track URL: http://open.spotify.com/track/5GDRi17PXH6mZpQyiLIxgG

iTunes URL: https://music.apple.com/album/loves-theme-single/1527174764?ls=1&app=itunes
Apple Music URL: https://music.apple.com/album/loves-theme-single/1527174764

Deezer: https://deezer.page.link/aTTfwMKfuVxdgsSSA
Qobuz: https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/loves-theme-sacha-puttnam/covhcdhb093ba
YouTube: https://youtu.be/xJdfa1pAxmc