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Press Releases
Recording News from Divine Art: July 2014
A new album of chamber works by English composer David Gorton is in preparation at Métier Records (the new-music specialty label of the Divine Art Recordings Group). The album is named for the main track ‘Orfordness’ – inspired by the East Anglian landscape, now a nature reserve, but formerly a secret weapons testing facility and site of many reported UFO encounters. The extended piano solo incorporates radio dialogue between USAF officers at one such sighting and is played by exciting Australian pianist Zubin Kanga. Kanga also appears on another piece drawing on the landscape of eastern England: Fosdyke Wash – this time with the Kreutzer Quartet. Two extended and advanced-technique virtuoso pieces complete the album – the 2nd Solo Cello Sonata, written for and played by Neil Heyde with electronic support from Milton Mermikides, and ‘Austerity Measures II’ – a virtuoso piece presented by world-renowned oboist Christopher Redgate again with the Kreutzer Quartet in a fizzing live performance.
David Gorton studied composition with Harrison Birtwistle and Simon Bainbridge. While still a student, he won the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize. His music is generally described as ‘difficult’ – certainly for the performers, with a penchant for extreme virtuosity and using advanced techniques and unusual tuning systems. Kreutzer Quartet violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved has said: “Gorton’s music is rich, multi-faceted, tremendously well crafted and, from an instrumental viewpoint, beautifully, idiomatically written. What is surprising, then, is that in its challenges, it is also fun.” * Gorton teaches at the Royal Academy of Music in London. ‘Orfordness’ will be released in early 2015 (Métier MSV 28550)
*From program notes, ‘Trajectories’, Métier MSVCD92104
David Gorton studied composition with Harrison Birtwistle and Simon Bainbridge. While still a student, he won the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize. His music is generally described as ‘difficult’ – certainly for the performers, with a penchant for extreme virtuosity and using advanced techniques and unusual tuning systems. Kreutzer Quartet violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved has said: “Gorton’s music is rich, multi-faceted, tremendously well crafted and, from an instrumental viewpoint, beautifully, idiomatically written. What is surprising, then, is that in its challenges, it is also fun.” * Gorton teaches at the Royal Academy of Music in London. ‘Orfordness’ will be released in early 2015 (Métier MSV 28550)
*From program notes, ‘Trajectories’, Métier MSVCD92104
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