Lisa Moore - Lightning Slingers & Dead Ringers - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

[Lisa Moore is] the best kind of contemporary classical musician, one so fearsomely game that she inspires composers to offer her their most wildly unplayable ideas. She can play them all.- Pitchfork Pianist Lisa Moore completes her 3-EP series with Stainless Staining, featuring compositions by Irish composer, Donnacha Dennehy. Commissioned by Lisa Moore with funds provided by the Arts Council of Ireland, the title track, Stainless Staining was written for piano and soundtrack. Donnacha Dennehy is the founder of Dublin's renowned new music group, Crash Ensemble. He was recently appointed a Global Scholar at Princeton University and received rave reviews for his 2011 recording.

In his Four-Part Consorts, John Jenkins (1592-1678) parades his much-vaunted contrapuntal prowess that is marked by a fanatical devotion to the equality of four independent parts. Frequently turbulent and given to frenetic activity, this music charts the interactions of a band of like-minded spirits obsessed with lively struggle and restless soul-searching. The incessant peregrinations of Jenkins's roving harmonies are heady stuff and make moments of calm and valediction all the more deserved and poignant. This recording brings to fruition Phantasm's long-standing project to issue Jenkins's complete consorts for four to six viols complemented by 'Jenkins Six-Part Consorts' and 'Jenkins Five-Part Consorts' (both released by Linn). In over half of the four-part pieces, the viols are joined by organist Daniel Hyde whose sensitive shaping of original accompaniments on a fruity seventeenth-century-style instrument helps nurture Jenkins's grandiose ambitions.

Lisa Moore - Seven [COMPACT DISCS] date 03/29/2011