21st Century Consort

21st Century Consort – Eugene O’Brien: Algebra of Night (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:38 minutes | 911 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © New Focus Recordings

Composer Eugene O’Brien teams up with Washington D.C. based ensemble The 21st Century Consort, led by conductor Christopher Kendall, for an album of two of his ensemble compositions, Algebra of Night and Elegy to the Spanish Republic. The two pieces both take inspiration from a constellation of sources related to iconic places. Algebra of Nightfor voice and piano quartet sets poetry by six poets who lived in Manhattan at some point and whose work was shaped by the experience of that multi-layered metropolis. Elegy to the Spanish Republic for nine instruments is a “musical addition” to Robert Motherwell’s powerful series of paintings in response to the Spanish Civil War. In both, O’Brien displays his deft, subtle intuition for how to write music that emerges from a pre-existing context while retaining the integrity of both the music and the extra-musical source of inspiration.

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