News

Trumpet-and-organ in accord

Deborah Calland has established quite a niche for herself at a time when the trumpet is enjoying prominence as a primary colour in many contemporary musical landscapes. Her sound is assured and communicative, at once raunchy in the compelling Three Orations by Huw Watkins and John Hawkins’s Sortie, yet innately lyrical with all the risks inherent in Rhian Samuel’s and Robin Holloway’s exposed and atmospheric creations.

Far from a heavy-going recital of an unfashionable duo medium (at least in this country), Calland and the prize-winning organist William Whitehead seek out vibrancy of timbre and a definition of character rarely achieved in reverberant buildings, where the best organs tend to reside.

Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Gramophone

...the insightful characterisations of Deborah Calland’s expressive trumpet, and the attentive focus of William Whitehead...

Paul Riley, BBC Music Magazine

North Star was chosen by Michael Church as Disc of the Week in The Independent and selected by Radio 3's CD Review for The Listening Booth.

All in all, a rewarding and stimulating collection of contemporary British music which makes a very worthwhile contribution to the trumpet-and-organ genre. The playing throughout is impeccable and persuasive and the recorded sound is excellent. Glyn Pursglove, Music Web

On the Edge

Together with collaborators Alexandra Wood, Kyle Horch, Helen Reid and Eleanor Bron, Deborah is working on and developing a substantial new hybrid piece (for violin, trumpet, saxophone, piano, narrator and video) by Edward Rushton, called On the Edge. Following the premiere at the Djanogly Theatre, Nottingham, next April, the work will be performed at the City of London and Newbury Spring festivals, St George's Brandon Hill and other venues to be confirmed.

The story, which is set in the Swiss Jungfrau region, takes as its starting point the memoirs of Sir Arnold Lunn, the inventor of the slalom, and his recollection of his wife’s near-fatal accident in an avalanche. The scenario also weaves in the terrifying booming sounds that herald an avalanche, a light-hearted philosophical discussion of the purpose of sport and a Swiss folktale. The 35-minute piece alternates music and narration to create a work which, in the composer’s own words, will be ‘colourful, strange, multilayered and slightly absurd’.