Wonderland by The King's Singers

Various composers

The King's Singers

Wonderland

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212073926
Catnr: SIGCD 739
Release date: 22 September 2023
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Label
Signum Classics

UPC
0635212073926

Catalogue number
SIGCD 739

Release date
22 September 2023

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Wonderland is full of magic and myth. Containing exclusively works commissioned by The King’s Singers across their 55 years, the album celebrates their trademark musical storytelling, with no shortage of comedy. György Ligeti’s six Nonsense Madrigals, each setting playful children’s poetry or extracts from Lewis

Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, provide a musical spine to the album, commemorating 100 years since the composer’s birth in 1923. From just over 50 years ago, the fairytale The Musicians of Bremen (1972) - set to music by the Australian composer and Master of the Queen’s Music Malcolm Williamson -sits alongside Time Piece (1972) by Paul Patterson, which tells an eccentric alternative creation story. These myth-based works have recent companions such as Judith Bingham’s extended work Tricksters (2019), which unearths what could happen if miscreants from different world mythologies could come together for the first time, and Ola Gjeilo’s A Dream within a Dream which questions the very nature of perception
and reality. The album also features the legendary Japanese film and game composer Joe Hisaishi’s first ever choral work, I was there (2022), focussing on the cultural memory of tragic events such as 9/11 and the 2011

Japan Earthquake. Themes of hope and positivity, centred on the natural world, emerge in Makiko Kinoshita’s Ashita no uta (Song for tomorrow) (2020) and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Alive (2022).

Artist(s)

The King's Singers

The King's Singers have set the gold standard in a cappella singing on the world’s greatest stages for over fifty-five years. They are renowned for their unrivalled technique, musicianship and versatility, which stem from the group’s rich heritage and its drive to bring an extraordinary range of new and unique works, collaborations and recordings to life. The King’s Singers’ extensive discography has led to numerous awards, including two Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a place in Gramophone magazine’s inaugural Hall of Fame. The King’s Singers were officially formed in 1968 when six recent choral scholars from King’s College, Cambridge gave a concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. By chance, the group was made up of two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass, and the group has stuck to this formation ever since.
In the last few years, the group has recorded and released a series of diverse, collaborative albums that showcase the huge breadth of their repertoire. One honours two great English Renaissance composers: Thomas Weelkes and William Byrd; another is centred around Romantic music; a third honours 100 years of Disney, with 28 brand-new arrangements of iconic Disney songs; a fourth is a double-album focussed on the group’s library of signature ‘close harmony’ arrangements; and another celebrates the group’s extraordinary body of commissioned new music. Growing the global canon of choral music has always been one of the group's key aims, and The King’s Singers have now commissioned more than 300 works by many of the most prominent composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. These composers include John Tavener, Joe Hisaishi, Judith Bingham, Eric Whitacre, György Ligeti, Luciano Berio, Penderecki and Toru Takemitsu. All this new music joins their body of bespoke a cappella arrangements, including many by King’s Singers past and present.
Alongside their demanding performing and recording schedule – with over 100 concerts worldwide every season – the group leads educational workshops and residential courses across the globe, working with ensembles on their approaches to group singing. To mark their 50th anniversary in 2018, they founded The King’s Singers Global Foundation (based in the USA), to provide a platform to support the creation of new music across multiple disciplines, to coach a new generation of performers, and to provide musical opportunities to people of all backgrounds.

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Composer(s)

György Ligeti

György Ligeti is considered as one of the most important representatives of the postwar avant garde, next to Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciana Berio and Iannis Xenakis. While the science fiction classic 2001: A Space Oddyssey created publicity for Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra in particular, most of the impressive music comes from Ligeti's Atmosphères and his Requiem. Ligeti's somber sounds could also be applied to happier things: in his obscene and death-defying opera Le Grand Macabre he would mock the horroreffects of experimental music in a hilarious manner. Ligeti's maniac experiments often exceeded the human measure (think of his virtuoso Etudes for piano). Perhaps his most consequent work is the purely mechanic Poème Symphonique for 100 ticking metronomes. Legend goes that its première was recorded only to...

György Ligeti is considered as one of the most important representatives of the postwar avant garde, next to Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciana Berio and Iannis Xenakis. While the science fiction classic 2001: A Space Oddyssey created publicity for Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra in particular, most of the impressive music comes from Ligeti's Atmosphères and his Requiem. Ligeti's somber sounds could also be applied to happier things: in his obscene and death-defying opera Le Grand Macabre he would mock the horroreffects of experimental music in a hilarious manner.

Ligeti's maniac experiments often exceeded the human measure (think of his virtuoso Etudes for piano). Perhaps his most consequent work is the purely mechanic Poème Symphonique for 100 ticking metronomes. Legend goes that its première was recorded only to be archived with the note: never to be broadcasted again!

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Judith Bingham

Ola Gjeilo

Ola Gjeilo was born in 1978 in Skui, Norway. Rumor has it that he began playing the piano and composing when he was five years old. Currently, Gjeilo is one of the most frequently performed composers in the choral world. An accomplished pianist, improvisations over his own published choral pieces have become a trademark of his collaborations across the world. Although Norwegian by birth, it is perhaps Ola’s adopted country of America that has influenced the composer's distinctive soundworld the most, evolving a style that is both contemporary and familiar; thick harmonies and rich textures recall film score - music that forms a major part of the composer's inspiration. His choral music has been recorded by several notable ensembles such as the...

Ola Gjeilo was born in 1978 in Skui, Norway. Rumor has it that he began playing the piano and composing when he was five years old.
Currently, Gjeilo is one of the most frequently performed composers in the choral world. An accomplished pianist, improvisations over his own published choral pieces have become a trademark of his collaborations across the world. Although Norwegian by birth, it is perhaps Ola’s adopted country of America that has influenced the composer's distinctive soundworld the most, evolving a style that is both contemporary and familiar; thick harmonies and rich textures recall film score - music that forms a major part of the composer's inspiration.
His choral music has been recorded by several notable ensembles such as the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, The Choir of Royal Holloway, the Flemish Radio Choir, and Voces8. Gjeilo is composer-in-residence for the ensemble Voces8 and the Distinguished Concerts International New York.

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