COMPOSERS: Bennett,Bjork,Costello,Monk,Sexsmith,Sting,Wallen etc
LABELS: Brodsky
ALBUM TITLE: Moodswings
WORKS: One Emotional Girl; I've Seen it all
PERFORMER: Elvis Costello, Jacqui Dankworth, Ian Shaw, Sophie Grimmer, Meredith Monk, Richard Rodney Bennett, Bjork, Adey Grummet, Brodsky Quartet
CATALOGUE NO: BRD 3501
Moodswings is the distillation of
a three-year educational project
intitiated by the Brodsky Quartet,
aimed at getting schoolchildren
to write music for voice and string
quartet. The Brodsky has been this
way before: The Juliet Letters, its 1993
collaboration with Elvis Costello, was
a pioneering effort in composing for
this unusual combination.
Costello surfaces again in this
new collection, contributing the
spiky (klezmer-cum-Shostakovich)
title track and a poignant take on
Randy Newman’s ‘Real Emotional
Girl’. Other big names also feature
– Sting’s typically suave and tasteful
vocal over the Brodsky’s pizzicatobased
accompaniment on ‘Until’ is
one highlight, Björk’s insinuatingly
neurotic ‘I’ve Seen It All’ is another.
The heart of this CD, however, lies
in the teenage contributions (sung by
professionals), which are strikingly
fresh and spontaneous in impact.
‘The Abyss’ (Kate Curtis/Will South),
for instance, convincingly sets the dying
Purcellian fall of its outer framework
against a disturbingly agitated
centre. Humour and wry relational
observations, by contrast, dominate
‘Venus Flytrap’, a jerkily minimalistic
offering by Blatchington Mill School
pupils. Emma Tillyer’s ‘When
Darkness Comes’ (soaring vocal, creepy
quartet noodlings in the undergrowth)
is another standout selection. ‘Crossover
novelty’, I hear you thinking. It isn’t,
though – this is something genuinely
different. Terry Blain