Sarah Davachi - The Will of Tongues - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The Will of Tongues is the new studio album by Sarah Davachi, and it is certainly her most ambitious to date, spanning over two hours, available as a triple vinyl set, or double compact disc in hardback book style packaging. The album features five new works for historical pipe organs, three choral pieces, a suite of InchinterludesInch for various microtonal ensembles, and a longform chamber piece for strings, organ, and tape. In addition to Davachi performing on organ, the album also features an incredible group of musicians from across the US and Europe, including Whitney Johnson (viola), Eyvind Kang (viola), Lucy Railton (cello), Diapason (an experimental brass ensemble from Los Angeles), Phaedrus (a Renaissance flute consort from Switzerland), and Chamber Choir Ireland. The album engages several different compositional methods and concepts, all rooted in the minimalist tradition from which Davachi primarily operates, but underscoring The Will of Tongues as a combined body of work is a deep reverence for the act of listening. This collection of music is not easy listening, and it's not meant to be - when long durations and a reduction of materials are at play, the ear and mind are forced to confront sound itself and the significant mental spaces that it continually gives rise to. The Will of Tongues is thus a celebration of iterative listening and of extreme confrontation, of intimate aural experience and it's vast psychic horizons.

Ian Venables studied composition with Richard Arnell at Trinity College of Music, London and later with John Joubert, Andrew Downes and John Mayer at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. His works encompass many genres and he has added significantly to the canon of English art song. Described as 'Britain's greatest living composer of art song' (Musical Opinion) and 'a song composer as fine as Finzi and Gurney' (BBC Music Magazine), Ian Venables has written over 80 works in this genre, including nine song-cycles. As the title suggests, the works on this disc are predominantly reflective in mood although this does not preclude the use of faster-moving music whenever the poetry requires it. It's subject matter celebrates the timelessness of love through the poetry of James Joyce, John Drinkwater, Edward Thomas, John Clare, Robert Nichols and the modern poet Jennifer Andrews; the celebration and commemoration of Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, in Sir Andrew Motion's remarkable narrative poem Remember This and the collective remembrance of those who died in the First World War the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy and the less well-known Francis St. Vincent Morris providing the impetus for one of Ian Venables' most dramatic and profoundly moving cycles.

Sarah Davachi - Barons Court [VINYL LP] Colored Vinyl, White date 06/06/2025