Wonderland

 
Wonderland cover
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MAKIKO KINOSHITA / GYORGY LIGETI / OLA GJEILO / JUDITH BINGHAM etc
Wonderland
The King's Singers

[ Signum / CD ]

Release Date: Friday 22 September 2023

This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.

Wonderland is full of magic and myth. Containing exclusively works commissioned by The King's Singers across their 55 years, the album celebrates their trademark musical storytelling, with no shortage of comedy. György Ligeti's six Nonsense Madrigals, each setting playful children's poetry or extracts from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, provide a musical spine to the album, commemorating 100 years since the composer's birth in 1923. From just over 50 years ago, the fairytale The Musicians of Bremen (1972) - set to music by the Australian composer and Master of the Queen's Music Malcolm Williamson sits alongside Time Piece (1972) by Paul Patterson, which tells an eccentric alternative creation story. These myth-based works have recent companions such as Judith Bingham's extended work Tricksters (2019), which unearths what could happen if miscreants from different world mythologies could come together for the first time, and Ola Gjeilo's A Dream within a Dream which questions the very nature of perception and reality. The album also features the legendary Japanese film and game composer Joe Hisaishi's first ever choral work, I was there (2022), focussing on the cultural memory of tragic events such as 9/11 and the 2011 Japan Earthquake. Themes of hope and positivity, centred on the natural world, emerge in Makiko Kinoshita's Ashita no uta (Song for tomorrow) (2020) and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers' Alive (2022).

Tracks:

1. Ashita no uta - Makiko Kinoshita
2. Nonsense Madrigals: I. Two Dreams and Little Bat - György Ligeti
3. A Dream within a Dream - Ola Gjeilo
4. Nonsense Madrigals: II. Cuckoo in the Pear-Tree - György Ligeti
5. Alive - Francesca Amewudah-Rivers
6. Nonsense Madrigals: III. The Alphabet - György Ligeti
7. I was there - Joe Hisaishi
8. Nonsense Madrigals: IV. Flying Robert - György Ligeti
9. Tricksters - Judith Bingham
10. Nonsense Madrigals: V. The Lobster Quadrille - György Ligeti
11. The Musicians of Bremen Malcolm Williamson
12. Nonsense Madrigals: VI. A Long, Sad Tale -György Ligeti
13. Time Piece - Paul Patterson