Elsewhere

Elsewhere – our thirteenth album – is a soaring celebration of sound inspired by chant and traditional song.

The late Michael Kennedy was a lauded member of the Australian folk scene; his Lay Fallow (arranged here by Izzy Gerometta) is a breathtaking meditation on the fertile earth.

Both Rotar’s Levaverunt flumina (‘The floods have lifted’; Psalm 93:3) and my Veni Creator Spiritus (‘Come Creator Spirit’) are made from florid, kaleidoscopic plainchant-like phrases.

Lachlan Skipworth contributed a commissioned work, Over and Over, responding to the ‘chant’ idea in a more free way, using the characteristic eddy of plainchant in his polyphonic writing.

The album steers from Latin to Teutonic territory, the two waves bridged by chants composed by 11th-century nun Hildegard von Bingen. I’ve reworked her hymn O Ignee Spiritus (‘O fiery Spirit’) into an earthy, primal call, utterly unlike the original.

John Tavener’s The Lamb is probably his best-known choral work, a setting of the William Blake poem of the same name. It balances musical simplicity – suggesting the innocence of the infant Jesus – with striking harmonic effects. 

Balulalow is a 16th-century cradle song, here in a modern setting by British composer Francis Pott – a lush outpouring of harmonic colour. 

Salve, ich grüs dich schöne and Christ ist erstanden are very old German songs (as old as you can go before German becomes something else!).

In Joseph Twist’s and Alice Chance’s new works – each titled Kulning (named after the traditional Swedish singing style) – please imagine a golden-haired maiden calling to her cows from one mountain- top to another (the lyrics are not Swedish, but rather nonsense words designed for clarity over distance rather than meaning).

- Gordon Hamilton