Clare Farr - Loudmouthed Beauty - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The figure of the clown has always had associations with the carnivalesque, masks and madness. The ability of Pierrot to be melancholic yet murderous, a trickster yet romantic can easily be traced back to the commedia del arte tradition of the 17th century. However, more interesting still is the older tradition of Carnival. Pierrot's ability to rape, steal, commit bigamy and suicide while simultaneously offering protestations of love or playing practical jokes is understood clearly within the context of carnival, that medieval Feast of Fools replete with drunken orgies on the altar table, indecent gestures, disrobing. The festival upends order. Fools become kings, appetites, both sexual and gormandising replace restraint. Pierrot represents human vice, he is outside of the law, and thus outside of sin. He makes us dream of a life which is purely sensual and freed from the yoke of conscience. Claire Booth and Ensemble 360 explore the fascination with the multi-faceted Pierrot by composers as diverse as Thea Musgrave, Debussy, Korngold, Amy Beach and, of course Schoenberg's groundbreaking Pierrot Lunaire.

Radio With/Out Voice is a provocative new album which reanimates John Cage's enduring fascination with the medium of radio. Performed by Clare and David Lesser-two of contemporary music's most versatile interpreters-this recording explores Cage's radiophonic works through performance, composition, and critical engagement.Far from being a nostalgic reconstruction, the Lessers' approach is both scholarly and boldly creative, situating Cage's use of radio not merely as a historical curiosity, but as a radical act of decentralisation of authorship, temporality, and musical expectation. This is Cage as theorist of transmission and static, prophet of sonic ephemerality, and architect of what Mark Fisher called Incha time out of joint.InchSpanning works such as Radio Music and One to the rarely heard Sculptures Musicales, this album presents the radio not only as a sonic instrument but as a philosophical site-an invisible architecture in which Cage staged his most audacious dismantling of musical norms. Static and fragmentation become expressive forces in themselves, mediated by the performers' acute sense of form and freedom.Drawing on deep knowledge of Cage's methods, including his application of the I Ching and his subversive use of silence and structure, Clare and David Lesser illuminate the vibrancy of Cage's late and lesser-known works. These performances embrace the medium's inherent unpredictability-it's InchcrackleInch and drift-and in doing so, reaffirm Cage's commitment to sound as process, possibility, and play.This is an album for critics, scholars, and listeners attuned to the intersections of philosophy, sonic experimentation, and media archaeology. It speaks to the ever-shifting boundary between sound and signal, listening and hearing.

Colin Matthews is one of the UK's leading composers and celebrates his 80th birthday this year. Known for his large-scale orchestral works, chamber works and smaller scale ensemble compositions, such as the song cycles on this album, Matthews is also a prolific arranger of other composers' music. He worked with Deryck Cooke on the performing version of Mahler's 10th Symphony from 1963 until publication in 1975. Seascapes brings together four of his song cycles and features soprano Claire Booth, baritone Marcus Farnsworth, and the Nash Ensemble.