Released on Friday 17 November, the second album from soprano Katharine Dain and pianist Sam Armstrong for 7 Mountain Records looks set to be every bit as captivating as the first.
You will be reading a lot more about this album soon on Arcana, as Forget This Night delves into seldom visited areas of the song repertoire. The featured composers are Lili Boulanger, Karol Szymanowski and Grażyna Bacewicz – with special emphasis on Lili’s song cycle Clairières dans le cieland, completed in 1914.
Over the course of our interview you will discover how the composers are connected not just in the deeply passionate source material but in their lives too.
For now, here is a preview of the album – and a link to listen on Spotify below:
John referenced the song Hazey Jane II, from the Bryter Layter album of 1971. Here he rediscovered a starry line-up of session musicians – including trumpeters Kenny Wheeler and Henry Lowther and guitarist Richard Thompson. The brass parts were arranged by the masterful Robert Kirby, while Drake’s band members for this song – and the Bryter Layter album – are completed by Dave Pegg (bass guitar) and Dave Mattacks (drums)
Listen to the song below, and appreciate the exquisite instrumental colouring around Drake’s dreamy vocal:
Nick Drake: The Life by Richard Morton Jack John Murray Press 2023 (576 Pages, ISBN: 9781529308082)
Reviewed by John Earls
I first encountered the songs of Nick Drake via the 1985 compilation album Heaven in a Wild Flower. There was something about this selection of bittersweet songs and delicate voice from the three albums released between 1969-72 by the enigmatic singer-songwriter (and exceptional guitarist) who died at the age of 26 that resonated strongly with this then twenty-something listener.
Richard Morton Jack’s recent biography Nick Drake: The Life is a comprehensive and detailed work (576 pages) compellingly and sensitively told. It captures the magic, music and story behind these three remarkable albums – Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter and Pink Moon – and much more.
Drake came from a privileged background – his 21st birthday present from his parents (a cheque for £750 – worth £10,000 in today’s money) is a particularly eye catching illustration.
But it is his musicality and dedication to his art that shines through. And, of course, there is the story of the mental illness that led to his untimely death.
The book is good on the details of Drake’s collaborators and contributors – I knew that Richard Thompson (guitar) and Danny Thompson (double bass) had played a part in some of his albums but if I already knew that British jazz legends Kenny Wheeler and Henry Lowther both played trumpet on Hazey Jane II, and P. P. Arnold was one of the backing vocalists on Poor Boy, then I’d forgotten.
It’s also good on recording performances given (John Peel) and missed (The Old Grey Whistle Test), and a fascinating encounter with the Rolling Stones in Marrakesh in 1967.
Some of Drake’s musical likes and influences won’t come as a surprise (Bob Dylan, Tim Buckley, Bert Jansch, Joni Mitchell). But there’s also a taste of Drake’s classical music listening including Fauré, Mahler, Debussy and Satie.
Jack’s biography is already being rightly hailed as ‘definitive’. But credit should also go to Patrick Humphries who wrote a groundbreaking biography in 1997 and gave Jack full access to his materials.
When I first heard Nick Drake’s music and read Humphries’ biography it was very much with the subject uppermost in my mind.
Now, as a parent myself, I am also moved by the traumas and anxiety experienced by Drake’s parents Rodney and Molly whose anguish and love is touchingly and delicately portrayed. Drake’s sister Gabrielle has written the foreword to the book but, as she makes clear, this is not an authorised biography.
This is a magnificent book. Inevitably it sent me back to the albums. There is no doubt the music will endure but ultimately, it’s a tragic and heartbreaking tale.
John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union. He tweets / updates his ‘X’ content at @john_earls
For more information on the book and to explore purchase options, visit the Waterstones website
Hopkins ATHOS (arr. Jules Buckley) (BBC Commission, world premiere) Feel First Life (arr. Peter Riley & Leo Abrahams) The Wider Sun (arr. Sam Gale) Singularity (arr. Simon Dobson) Music for Psychedelic Therapy – excerpt (arr. Peter Riley) Form by Firelight (arr. Peter Riley) Luna Moth (arr. Sam Gale) Collider (arr. Simon Dobson) Abandon Window (arr. Tom Trapp) Recovery
Jon Hopkins (piano, programming), Leo Abrahams (guitar), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master David Young), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Jules Buckley
Royal Albert Hall, London Tuesday 29 August 2023
by Ben Hogwood photos by Mark Allan / BBC
Electronic and orchestral music are more closely related than you might think, with Jon Hopkins a classic case in point. For 15 years, the pianist and producer has been carefully sculpting his music either as a contributor for other artists (King Creosote, Coldplay and Brian Eno to name just three) or making his own, weather-beaten albums. Starting with Opalescent and Insides, these have developed into immersive meditations (Singularity and the most recent long player Music for Psychedelic Therapy) by way of more full-bodied rave music (2013’s Immunity). How, then, does this music hold up in a packed and expectant Royal Albert Hall?
Extremely well as it turns out. In order to achieve what he described beforehand as ‘a meditation for 5,000 people’, Hopkins has to temporarily turn his back on beat-driven, post-rave landmarks such as Collider or Form By Firelight. When such material appears, its percussive impact is modified so that the main job is done by the timeless, meditative chorale echoing around the hall.
Hopkins’ music is repetitive, but as with the best exponents of minimalism – Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams, for instance – the material under repetition rewards the investment made. The mind is eased, enjoying the upfront melodies but also taking up the option of picking out new threads beneath the surface, like examining a tartan pattern under a magnifying glass.
The tartan analogy is purposeful, for Hopkins’ earlier music has a distinctive Celtic edge furthered by his work with King Creosote. The Wider Sun, from 2009 album Insides, has an authentic left of centre tuning, is slow but packs emotional heft, beautifully arranged by Sam Gale and masterfully weighted by Jules Buckley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra strings.
Before that we hear a new piece, the 25-minute ATHOS demonstrating Hopkins’ control of larger structures. This is a natural direction for his music to be taking after Music for Psychedelic Therapy, for it is effectively an album ‘A’ side of several interwoven tracks. The profile and material of ATHOS sits closely to composers such as Arvo Pärt, and in particular his Credo, but Hopkins has up his sleeve a number of heart-shifting modulations. Accentuated by the Royal Albert Hall organ, these are once heard, never forgotten moments.
So, too, are the choral passages, thanks to pinpoint interpretations from the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus, whose lines float effortlessly above the orchestral forces. Their vocal control is masterful and effortless, ensuring the sustained notes keep their emotional impact without wavering. Lesser singers would have tailed off long before these ones even think of blinking!
The sequence of music, running for approximately 75 minutes, is well chosen. Only on occasion does the source material become oversimplified, and as it turns out these moments serve as natural pauses for breath in the musical tapestry.
Guitarist Leo Abrahams, appearing for the last two numbers, makes a critical contribution (above). A good friend and established collaborator with Hopkins and Eno, he brings a sharper timbre to the shredded distortion of Recovery, which is – as throughout – complemented by imaginative and sympathetic lighting.
This was a multisensory Prom, containing a different sort of symphony to which the Royal Albert Hall is normally accustomed. Hopkins has proved his credentials in mastering larger structures, and his development in this field will be worth watching for sure. For now, the afterglow remains.
Too High (arr. Rob Taggart) Visions (arr. Callum Au) Living for the City (arr. Jochen Neuffer) Golden Lady (arr. Neuffer ) All in Love is Fair (arr. Tommy Laurence) Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You) (Music of my Mind, arr. Neuffer) They Won’t Go When I Go (arr. Tim Davies)a Jesus Children of America (arr. Davies) He’s Misstra Know-It-Allb Creepin’ (Fulfillingness’ First Finale, arr. Taggart)c Something Out of Blue (Where I’m Coming From, arr. Davies)c Higher Ground (arr. Neuffer) Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer (Where I’m Coming From, arr. Davies)d Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing (arr. Tom Richards)d Superstition (Talking Book) If It’s Magic (Songs in the Key of Life)
by Richard Whitehouse photos by Andy Paradise / BBC
From Nina Simone then Aretha Franklin to Stevie Wonder – these ‘tributes’ masterminded by Jules Buckley have become as much a Proms staple as were John Wilson’s stage-and-screen projects, with the 50th anniversary of Innervisions too notable an occasion to be passed over.
Now routinely hailed as one of the greatest albums, Innervisions was not always held in such esteem – being considered strong in atmosphere if short on hooks, which is rather to miss the point of its nine numbers merging into a seamless continuity broken only with the side-break of the LP. It duly elides between songs of love, self-awareness and social commentary with a mastery abetted by Wonder’s ingenuity as a musician and his skill as a producer; indeed, few albums, from what was to be the heyday for production, can rival its tangible space or depth.
Wonder’s distinctive if by no means inimitable voice makes his songs ideal for covering and, in Cory Henry, have a consummate keyboardist and eloquent singer able to encompass their conceptual and emotional range. Hence the dextrous organ intro’ then big-band stylings that underpinned the breezy ambivalence of Too High, or soulful communing of Visions with its textural enhancements from flute and electric guitar. It may have lacked the original’s urban ambience, but Living for the City emerged as an anthemic parable of racial injustice; then the amorous overtones of Golden Lady were enhanced by its shimmering slow shuffle.
An edgy vocal complemented the insistent groove of Higher Ground with its electronic and synthesized sounds which are no less intriguing today, while the Christian confessional that is Jesus Christ of America exuded piety but no undue emoting. The moodily reflective aura of All in Love is Fair benefitted from that deft backdrop of strings, as did the Latino-inflected jive of Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing as here made for an irresistibly upbeat ending to the album itself. Typical of Wonder, though, that he should have concluded the original’s playing order with the snide political diatribe of He’s Misstra Know-It-All and which can still punch like a velveted fist when rendered, as here, with the allure of guest vocalist Lianne La Havas.
This begs the question as to whether such a classic album is best heard as an integral unity or interspersed, as was its second side, with other items – which latter course enabled a capacity house to sample each of those albums from Wonder’s ‘golden age’. Thus, the composite that is Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You), its interplay of easy grooves with fatalistic thoughts ably rendered by Henry, but the pensively resigned They Won’t Go When I Go felt coarsened and sentimentalized by histrionics from guest vocalist Laura Mvula. Not so the darkly insinuating Creepin’ with superb lead from backing vocalist Vula Malinga, who duetted with Henry on the burnished Something out of the Blue. A star of last year’s Aretha tribute, Sheléa handled the soaring pathos of Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer with aplomb, then all reassembled for a rousing send-off in the inevitable guise of Superstition.
It could have ended there, but Henry returned for a rendition of If It’s Magic in its original (and superior) version – confirmation that Stevie’s output will long remain a thing of Wonder.
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