SKU: HL.49032923

ISBN 9783795754648. German - English.

SKU: HL.14035177

ISBN 9780711979406. 8.25x11.75x0.142 inches.

Irish composer Kevin Volans' work has gained international acclaim over the years. Drawing on a combination of European and African compositional techniques, his music displays a unique charm. Volans' distinctive sound is heavily in demand, and since the mid-1980s his work has been performed regularly at such venues as the Pompidou Centre, the Royal Albert Hall and the Lincoln Center in New York. This work for string quartet was commissioned by the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, and was first performed on the 16th December 1990 at the Almeida Theatre, London, by the Smith Quartet. Score. Parts available: CH61342.

SKU: FG.55011-775-4

ISBN 9790550117754.

Alex Freeman found initial inspiration for his string quartet (2015) in a series of photographs a geologist friend showed him of en échelon veins in rock formations. The open strings punctuated with pizzicato unisons that begin the single-movement work call to mind something crystalline and shimmering, which is immediately infused with tumbling lyrical lines in something of a rapid caccia technique throughout. The middle of the work becomes more suspended in slower material loosely based on a technique of prolation canon, comprises layers of free, expressive, lyrical, and even elegiac music moving at different speeds. As the work concludes, the materials converge in a rhythmically pulsating stasis and an almost chorale-like statement.

Duration: c. 13'

This product includes the score and the parts (A4 sized).


American-Finnish composer Alex Freeman (b.1972) has established himself among the foremost composers of choral music in Finland. A dedicated citizen of his musical community, a teacher, and a choral singer himself, he composes music that reflects an appreciation for a wide range of aesthetics and a passion for communicating with listeners and performers. In his choral works, in particular, we find music that aims to be sonorous, melodic, and resonant, but is always crafted to carefully avoid the cliches that can burden conventional tonality.

His instrumental works run the gamut: a cantata with orchestra based on poetry of Whitman; a significant body of solo piano works that reveal deep roots in everything from austere absolute music to soaring elegaic rhetoric (see Albany Records, Inner Voice); his chamber work Blueshift (Navona Records), which is a kind of paean to Reich and Adams in miniature; open-ended modular works, like various iterations of his Slow All Clocks for electronic media, solo clarinet, and mixed choirs of kanteles; and, recently, some new directions in microtonal music.