Release Date: 15 November 2019
Label: Nmc Recordings
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5060217670200
Genres: Classical Contemporary Country
Composer/Series: Coming Up For Air
Description
For many composers—Bach, Handel and Mozart among them—the fact that woodwind players need to breathe from time to time appears to be an inconvenience, an unwanted interruption to the long-?owing line, the continuous stream of activity. Breath breaks, becomes a barrier. But what if breathing itself was part of the music, rather than one of many hidden mechanisms that make it happen?
Flautist Kathryn Williams has faced chronic respiratory conditions which caused the connections between her body, breath and musical expression to be severed. A successful sinus operation in 2016 enabled her to resume her performance career and Coming Up For Air began as a response to her recovery. Kathryn was forced to approach her performances one breath at a time, so single-breath pieces were able to demonstrate some of the ways she was able to stitch these relationships back together. The result is an ever-growing body of work that has proven to be therapeutic, both musically and physically.
This album collects 40 different responses to one straightforward question: what can be communicated in a single breath? This limitation has inspired a wide range of approaches—some composers have contributed a melody, some have foregrounded a physiological challenge, others have o?ered a single sound, and others still have created their own playful exceptions to the prompt. The contributions are from composers of all ages, backgrounds and levels of experience. The youngest composer represented is just eight years old, and the album brings together aesthetically diverse artists including Chaya Czernowin, Oliver Coates, Amber Priestley, Andy Ingamells, Larry Goves, Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh, Newton Armstrong, Mary Bellamy, Stephen Chase, Sarah Hennies, Mauricio Pauly, and Brian Ferneyhough, who is represented here by the brief excerpt from Unity Capsule that provided the original inspiration for the project.
Tracklisting
Vimbayi Kaziboni; Joseph Havlat; BBC Philharmonic; Piatti Quartet
Plus-Minus Ensemble
Decibel
Xenia Pestova-Bennett, Stephen Richardson, Claire Booth, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Sian
Zoe Martlew, Ben Goldscheider, Lucy Schaufer, Huw Watkins, Mark Simpson, Alessandro Fisher, Lana Bo
Jorgen Pettersson, Paulina Sundin, Jens Hedman, Jonny Axelsson
Liza Lim, JACK Quartet, Jay Campbell, Rohan Dasika
Hannah Kendall, Ensemble Modern, Anne Denholm-Blair, Halle Orchestra, Jonathan Bloxham, Jonathan Mo
Kathryn Williams
Kathryn Williams
Kathryn Williams
