Amidst the Shades
Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mimé Yamahiro Brinkmann
(BIS)
In the pre-digital, pre-streaming era, singers could rely on single-composer, mainstream choices for albums. Now the defter of them make imaginative programmes to reflect their vocal individuality. Amidst the Shades by the soprano Ruby Hughes, with the lutenist Jonas Nordberg and gamba player Mimé Yamahiro Brinkmann, is a fine example.
Hughes and colleagues celebrate the 400th anniversary of John Dowland (c1563-1626), setting his expressive lute songs alongside those of his less familiar contemporaries Robert Johnson, Anthony Holborne and John Danyel. Sharp, fresh colours are added with works by today’s composers: Errollyn Wallen, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Deborah Pritchard. Britten’s tender Corpus Christi Carol is a must hear. Hughes is never shy to turn her voice as required from elegance and beauty to raw intensity.
Life Stories
Claire Booth, Jâms Coleman
(Orchid Classics)
That elusive point where art, song and cabaret meet is key to Life Stories, the soprano Claire Booth’s new album with the pianist Jâms Coleman. The title alludes to the last track: Thomas Adès’s Life Story, a work inspired by Tennessee Williams about the humdrum angst of lovers in a hotel room.
A selection of 20th century songs – by Hanns Eisler, Francis Poulenc and George Gershwin – gleam on the surface but hint at turbulence beneath. The ear-catching new work is Zoë Martlew’s Hôtel Babylon, verbally witty (the words are her own) and musically sexy. Vice is on the menu: “If submission is your mission, we’ve got experts in contrition / Who will grant your every wish in any style.” Martlew (b1968) wrote the cycle for Booth. The soprano’s reputation as a faultless interpreter of the challenging, with a keen sense of theatre, is confirmed.
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Miré: Revelries (EP)
Héloïse Werner, Kit Downes,Colin Alexander
(Delphian)
The French-born, UK-based soprano and composer Héloïse Werner is a performer of striking ingenuity. She uses every natural tool at her disposal – not just vocal cords but face and hands – to make sounds, from percussive to unearthly to yelps and yowls to the purely lyrical. On her EP Revelries, with regular collaborators Kit Downes (organ) and Colin Alexander (cello), an unusual mix of timbres collide and overlap with strange radiance. You have to hear these extraordinary talents to understand how they spin unexpected noise into affecting music.
Photograph by Phil Sharp