DESCRIPTION:
Matthew Sharp cello | Orchestra X / Nicholas Kok conductor
The Continuum Ensemble | Ensemble X / Philip Headlam conductor
Quartet X | Tim Harries bass guitar | Errollyn Wallen voice

Available on: http://nmcrec.co.uk/recording/photography

Errollyn’s music is both immediately familiar and entirely original. She combines popular styles, aspects of minimalism, baroque counterpoint, modernist rhythms, and lush romantic textures and draws on influences around her. Many of the works on this album have personal associations and are written for long-standing musical collaborators and friends who appear on this recording.

The Cello Concerto combines passion and beauty with a fearless, rigorous technique. It fuses the cello tradition of Bach to Britten with bluesy ostinatos, angular modernist jolts and an immersive string texture. Bach is also the influence in the 4-movement work Photography, with the second movement quoting Sinfonia No.14 (BWV 800).

If Bach provides one of the mainstays of Errollyn’s kaleidoscopic idiom, the other most obvious one is Purcell. The final track In Earth eerily adapts and distorts Dido's famous lament, using popular music delivery with Errollyn on vocals and jazz musician Tim Harries on bass guitar, accompanied by Quartet X.