Delighted that Helen Charlston and Toby Carr’s new album “Battle Cry: She Speaks” is now out, featuring my work “Battle Cry”. This 17 minute song cycle for mezzo and theorbo sets new texts by Georgia Way, and was commissioned by City Music Foundation.
This album sees the world of 17th century baroque glory, colliding with a 21st century take on the very special combination of voice and Theorbo, with pieces guiding us through a world of tumult and love, determination and prayer.
You can stream now on your chosen platform, or purchase a copy here.
About the Album
This powerful yet understated recital of modern and seventeenth-century works aims to revisit but also to re-balance the obsession of earlier music with female abandonment and lament. The stories of women such as Dido and Ariadne have been told and retold throughout history. Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston reconsiders the assumed helplessness of those often seen as being left behind by male adventure and success. A recent work commissioned for Charlston from the composer Owain Park further takes up the challenge of giving ‘abandoned women’ their own platform, as well as exploring new possibilities for an instrumental pairing – that of voice and theorbo – that remains little explored in contemporary music.
Reviews
“Park’s work, to evocative texts by Georgia Way, is a hugely powerful centrepiece, sometimes Britten-like in its gaunt transparency, its folk allusions, and monumentally dramatic in the lengthy final song, Marietta.”
– The Scotsman
“Park makes wonderful use of the surprising range of expression and tone offered by the voice-theorbo combination, and Charlston and Carr rise magnificently to the challenge, so that even when the music employs serial technique, it is thoroughly engaging”
– Uropadisc