Discography: 2020s

‘Tangled Goodbye’ is a collaborative, improvised album from decorated solo percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, virtuoso bassist John Edwards, experimental guitarist and cellist Owen Gardner and innovative percussionist and xylophonist Bex Burch.

With a residency at London’s Café OTO as the backdrop, Burch’s ‘messy minimalism’ intertwines with Glennie’s percussive mastery, Edwards’ expansive contrabass techniques, and Gardner’s hypnotic guitar micro-tones, resulting in five tracks that enthrall and reward deep listening, with their unexpected turns and vital dynamics.

Glennie – who has won two Grammys among other awards and nominations, and whose work includes that with Bjork and Bobby McFerrin – has been exploring percussive sounds by listening with her whole body for decades. Virtuoso contrabassist Edwards’ staggering range of techniques has been expanding the role of the instrument as a pillar of the London experimental music and free jazz scene since the mid-1990s, whilst being a near permanent fixture in Evan Parker and Louis Moholo-Moholo’s groups too.

Gardner, best known for his work with Matmos, and the beloved experimental rock band Horse Lords, creates deeply personal and hypnotic microtones on his self-modified guitars, using the ‘just intonation’ tuning system. Burch’s work is characterized by a unique blend of space, repetition, and controlled chaos, as exemplified on her acclaimed 2023 solo album, ‘There is only love and fear’, released by Chicago’s International Anthem, and awarded the prestigious title of The Guardian’s Contemporary Album of the Month.

Safe spaces for free expression and collaboration are becoming increasingly rare these days, but Café OTO in Dalston, East London, has provided that freedom to its community of artists and listeners for more than 15 years. The venue regularly invites performers for multi-day residencies, allowing them the opportunity to present a wider scope of their work than a single concert ever could.

In September 2022, OTO welcomed Bex Burch for one of these residencies, and for one evening, Burch invited Glennie, Edwards, and Gardner to perform an improvised set with her. The results sound wild and free at times, then again quiet and restrained, thriving off dynamics and contrast. Quietness and space gives way to loudness and frenzy, gentle slowness leads into frenetic busyness. What doesn’t change is that it feels vital and alive in every moment.

The base layer of the music is shaped by the two percussionists Burch and Glennie, with sparse melodic elements added by Burch’s xylophone and Garder’s microtonal guitar, while Edwards’ double bass works like a motor, suggesting direction and holding together the compositions that cohere elements of free jazz, noise, industrial, minimal music and musique concrète.

Relying mainly on room mics, without any overdubs. The five tracks on the album were compiled and edited from the most striking moments of a longer OTO set, picked by Burch and titled by Glennie.

Each song title consists of two words – a concrete, relatively specific noun combined with an abstract, airy adjective or adverb that confuses the listener’s imagination, similar to the often unforeseeable changes of direction in the music. How can a goodbye be ‘tangled’? When’s an image ‘liquid’? What is ‘nervous’ attraction? Which toys were ‘stolen’ and by whom?

The album marks the sixth release on Burch’s Vula Viel Records, named after the post-punk band she helms, and follows ‘Skylla’, a Guardian Top Ten Album of 2021, by long-time Vula Viel bassist, Ruth Goller, and ‘Boing!’, the collaborative album with Leafcutter John.

Vula Viel means ‘good is good’ in Dagaare, or ‘the good we do remains’. ‘Tangled Goodbye’ isn’t about commercial scalability, but about artistic expression, about continuing to create, expand and inhabit these spaces.

Anthropometricks – Trio HLK | CD

March 2024

HLK have now completed their second recorded volume: ‘Anthropometricks’. Their unique musical relationship with Dame Evelyn Glennie has evolved and the results captured in five of the eight compositions on the album. Two additional artists have also been invited into the fray. British Cellist Natalie Clein’s rich tone and melodic interpretation add a wealth of texture. Varijashree Venugopal contributes a spell-binding vocal performance, including an incredible improvisation on the title track.

Capt’s Look – Evelyn Glennie, Szilárd Mezei Polar Quartet | CD

December 2023

This performance is a second coming together of a rather unusual but wonderful pair; Dame Evelyn Glennie, a household name in percussion, and Szilárd Mezei, a prolific free improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. In 2018, these two artists came together in the Core-tet Project, one of Dame Evelyn’s significant forays into free improvisation. Since then, she also worked with TRIO HLK, but this live performance with Mezei and his quartet is a much different kind of performing for her. While many of Dame Evelyn’s audiences flock to listen to her play as well as establish canon as the most preeminent soloist in her field, this recording demonstrates something altogether different. These two impromptu creations present her as an excellent collaborator in real time. Not that audiences need it, but we are also reminded yet again of just how amazing of a listener she is. Despite her image as an iconic soloist, Dame Evelyn knows when to jump in, layout, and communicate with the other players throughout the performance. The ebb and flow of the music is natural. Textures are blended. Players are supported throughout both performances. Mezei’s quartet is comprised of some of his closest collaborators and it is easy to hear how comfortably they communicate with each other on stage. Dame Evelyn’s musical chemistry with percussionist Ivan Burka at times makes the percussionists indistinguishable from one another. Some listeners might expect this recording to sound like Evelyn Glennie and the Mezei quartet as being separate entities, but every player pulls their own weight and the sounding result becomes that of a quintet rather than a soloist and a quartet.

Projects like this one are unique and perhaps do not happen as much as they should. Evelyn Glennie has always been a trailblazer in the percussion community and the world of classical music but is not often discussed as an improviser. Szilard Mezei and his team of regular performers, despite being as prolific with their output as they have been for decades, do not receive as much attention or credit as is merited, but this is also true of other significant improvisers (György Szabados, Derek Bailey, Albert Ayler, and others being in a similar category). However, as this album demonstrates, free improvisers and prominent mainstream soloists can easily and effectively occupy the same spaces and create incredible musical experiences. This performance, as well as Core-tet, can bring different kinds of listeners together. Dame Evelyn, Mezei, Ranković, Burka, and Malina have given listeners a collaboration that provides a bridge between two types of musicians, showing that perhaps the distances between them are not so great.

Ailís Ní Ríain: The Last Time I Died | CD

May 2023

NMC D270

The Last Time I Died is the first full-length album from the Irish composer Ailís Ní Ríain. The latest in NMC’s Debut Disc series features a group of musically diverse artists performing a rich selection of Ní Ríain’s chamber and small-scale works, the “theatre, intimacy, and nuance” of which has occupied the composer over much of the previous 20 years of her career.

Described by the Irish Times as “a significant talent” Ní Ríain’s music has been performed across Europe and further afield in Brazil, Japan, and the USA. One of the principle ideas explored in Ní Ríain’s work is communication with others, something which she has a unique perspective on as she is deaf/hard of hearing. Whilst this has sometimes placed her in challenging situations regarding verbal communication, her hearing differences have also heightened and enhanced how she relates to sound. The Last Time I Died is a portrait of a composer harnessing this unique experience of the sonic world to explore a huge range of substantial themes including consciousness, relationships, reality, and death.

Focal points on the album include Revelling/Reckoning, a two-movement work for wind quintet and percussion, which aims to reflect the contradictory nature of existence, heard here in a recording by the New London Chamber Ensemble and another musician who has embraced her hearing challenges in her artistry, the iconic percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Contradiction also lies at the heart of Hiding Out ‘Neath the Everything for violin and recorded altered piano, which explores the internal and external aspects of consciousness in this recording featuring violinist Darragh Morgan. Soberado, a toy piano work that reflects on experiences of sobriety, really exemplifies Ní Ríain’s distinct approach to instrumentation in this recording by Xenia Pestova Bennett. Featuring Tim Williams on cimbalom and Tom McKinney on guitar, Thank You is a movement from Ní Ríain’s 2010 music-theatre work Brief-Blue-Electric-Bloom, which combines music, sign language, poetry and animation, aiming to “enable a deaf audience and ‘disable’ a hearing audience so that they might ‘receive’ the work equally”.

SANDMAN’S CASTLE – The Solo and Duo Works of Vincent Ho | Digital Album

October 2022

NV6462

A compendium of uniquely-orchestrated and masterfully executed solo and duo works are brought to life from a roster of renowned performers: Vicky Chow, Susanne Ruberg-Gordon, Ben Reimer, Beth Root Sandvoss, and Evelyn Glennie, who serves as a listener’s guide on a mystical journey into the world of dreams in the albums titular track.

Between explorations of uncharted territories with tam-tam and music boxes and thoughtful juxtapositions of the drumset with mainstays in classical music, Ho pulls out all of the stops with the renowned featured performers, and his dexterous compositional tool-kit throughout.

Wash – Keeley Forsyth (single from the album Limbs) | Digital Album

February 2022

Immersive Stories: Sue Verran, Evelyn Glennie, Chris Warner | Digital Album

October 2021

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Sue Verran has always seen herself as a storyteller first and foremost, so the title of her latest collection for Audio Network makes perfect sense. Together with percussion including hang drum, marimba and mbira from the legendary Dame Evelyn Glennie and production and arrangements from esteemed composer and orchestrator Chris Warner, Immersive Stories more than lives up to its billing, encouraging the listener to get lost in its myriad moods, which extend from brooding and tense to dreamy and mysterious, combining pizzicato strings, hang drum, marimba, and mbira.

Joan Tower Strike Zones | CD

July 2021

Naxos 8.559902

Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of today’s most important American composers. The works heard here in their world premiere recordings are part of a growing legacy that one pundit has described as “The Power of Tower.” Strike Zones is tailor-made for percussionist Evelyn Glennie’s dazzling technique and impeccable musicianship. The work’s orchestration is crafted to enhance a stage filled with percussion instruments while in Small they are contained on a single table, the soloist working like a brilliant chef. The piano concerto Still/Rapids was inspired by the glistening beauty and powerful force of water, and Ivory and Ebony, written as a test piece for an international piano competition, is infused with Towers “high-energy” signature.

Soundtrack from Director Darius Marder’s Academy Award–Winning Film ‘Sound of Metal,’ By Abraham Marder and Nicolas Becker

April 2021

Nonesuch

The original motion picture soundtrack for the critically acclaimed and Academy Award-winning film Sound of Metal is available on all digital service providers via Nonesuch Records today. Winner of two Academy Awards—for Sound and Editing—Sound of Metal’s soundtrack, which features a score by Abraham Marder and Nicolas Becker, highlights the film’s extraordinary sonic design and includes music written specifically for the project as well as pre-existing works such as “Rejoice, Beelzebub!” by Thomas de Hartmann and George Ivanovich Gurdjieff; “Cet amour me tue” by Arthur H, performed by Arthur H and Martha Wainwright as well as by the film’s actors Olivia Cooke and Mathieu Amalric; and two songs by Margaret Chardiet. The world-renowned percussionist Evelyn Glennie is featured on three of the album’s pieces; other performers include Marder, Becker, and the film’s lead actor Riz Ahmed.

1 SOUND – Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker
2 Cochlea (feat. Evelyn Glennie) – Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker3 Audiology (feat. Evelyn Glennie) – Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker
4 Last Threads (feat. Evelyn Glennie) – Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker
5 North – Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker
6 OF – Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker
7 ‘Rejoice, Beelzebub!’ (feat. Carolina Santana) – Elan Sicroff, Carolina Santana
8 The Deed – Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker, Carolina Santana
9 METAL – Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker, Carolina Santana
10 Bells – Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker
11 Communion – Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker
12 Green – Abraham Marder
13 Cet Amour Me Tue (feat. Martha Wainwright) – Arthur H
14 Purify (feat. Harry Cantwell) – Margaret Chardiet
15 Cet Amour Me Tue – Olivia Cooke, Matheiu Amalric
16 Purify – Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke

Awards

Open Barrier | CD

February 2021

Naxos World

Leading American composer John Corigliano had reservations about writing a percussion concerto, but the challenge fascinated him. The result is Conjurer, a concerto for percussion like no other, in which ‘wood, metal and skin’ are utilised in such a way that the soloist, Dame Evelyn Glennie—the world’s greatest percussion virtuoso—‘conjures’ the musical material from these three choirs, and the orchestra then shares and develops the themes.

Liverpool Lullabies – Waves of Wollongong | CD

February 2021

BIS

As a performer and conductor, Christian Lindberg has a rare ability to electrify an audience, and as reviewers attest, the same applies to his compositions. Released on disc in 2018, his viola concerto Steppenwolf was described as one of those rare contemporary works that captures the attention from the first notes (Fanfare) while the five-star review in BBC Music Magazine spoke of thrilling orchestral storytelling and glorious musical cavalcades. The present album offers further opportunity to acquaint oneself with the unstoppable energy of Lindberg in all of his three incarnations. The disc is named after the closing work, 2017, described by Lindberg as his testimony about a year when the world changed, as a result of the US presidential election. Starting work on it on 1st January he followed the news in the media and let it feed his creative process throughout the course of the year. The opening work is an earlier one, commissioned for the nine trombones of The New Trombone Collective, and inspired by the spectacle of great waves rolling in at the beach in Wollongong, Australia. Framed by these two is Liverpool Lullabies, a concertante work for percussion and trombone which Lindberg composed with Evelyn Glennie and himself in mind. They are also the soloists on this recording, supported by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra which also shines in the other two works on the disc.

Concertos for Mallet Instruments | CD

January 2021

Naxos 8574218

“This compilation of concertos for mallet instruments features triple GRAMMY Award-winning percussion virtuoso Dame Evelyn Glennie and City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong. Alexis Alrich’s Marimba Concerto, a rich amalgam of bold rhythms and exuberance, also explores Mexican and Asian-inspired music. Sir Karl Jenkins traces the 15th-century tune La Folia, furnishing it with refinement and strongly characterised intensity. Ned Rorem’s Mallet Concerto highlights the contrasting resonances of four different pitched mallets in music of drama and dynamism.”

Countermeasure Guest Sessions | CD

September 2020

Countermeasure

For Alice – This track is the only co-write on Guest Sessions. The press release explains that “Unlike the other works, Dame Glennie’s improvised performance came first. She provided Countermeasure’s Aaron Jensen with several extended improvisations to choose from on a variety of percussion instruments. Jensen selected Dame Evelyn’s expressive performance on the RAV drum (a dreamy and resonant pitched hand percussion instrument). Jensen kept her improvisation completely intact and mapped melody and lyric over the foundations of her gestural performance.”

Purchase via Third Party Link

Will Pound’s A Day Will Come

8th May 2020

Will Pound Lulubug Records LULUBUG005

“When I received the news that the funding had been awarded to this project I was sat waiting for a plane to Japan having just played at Hong Kong Arts festival. I think it was fair to say that I was fairly emotional at this is a subject close to my heart. I was also very daunted by the challenge of learning 27 tunes from all the different EU member states and how to make it work on a record. How I approached this is similar to how I approached Through the Seasons. In that this is my take on the tunes that I have discovered and researched, while been inspired by the different sounds and musicians I worked with on this. One thing stood out for me and that is how music crosses borders and how interlinked everything is. And also when I was researching the tunes I didn’t want to go down the route of doing the obvious musical connections to each country. For example, the tunes from Cyprus and Greece do not sound like they should be from there, but I think it’s important to highlight this. I think this is something to savour and remember as the UK leaves the European Union.

This album is for all Europeans wherever you come from and whatever you believe in.”

Will Pound

Track List

JAUTRAIS KRODZIS – MAASLAND JIG – Latvia and Belgium 04:46
MY DARLING ASLEEP – JIMMY WARDS – STENSONS No2 – Ireland 04:48
KAAPREN VAREN – EL CANDI – Holland and Spain 04:18
KRAKOIAK – ELLIN POLKKA – Poland and Finland 06:22
D-DAQQA TALAMMARUN – AADU POLKA – Malta and Estonia 04:04
MURINHEIRA TRANSMONTANA DANCE – JAUNIMLIO POLKA – Portugal and Spain 03:50
RACA PLAVA PO DRAVI – CSARDAS SZAJHARMONKAN – Croatia and Hungary 03:34
KOZAN MAR – PIOS MORO MOU – Greece and Cyprus 04:28
MUZIC PESTE GRANIE – RACHENISTCA – Romania and Bulgaria 03:58
SCOTTISH A VIRMOUX – SBRANDO – NEAPOLITAN TARRANTELLA – France and Italy 07:16
SALTIN – SIKOVNY CARDAS – Slovakia and Slovenia 03:06
TANTZ – EXA RONGGER – Germany and Austria 04:58
PASLA KONIKA PODLE VOSENIKA – PROCESSION OF ECHTER – Czech Republic and Luxembourg 07:21
OSTINDIENS VELKOMST – SLANGPOLSKA – Denmark and Sweden 06:34