Manuel Zurria REPEAT!

The restless experimentation and creativity of Manuel Zurria (of Alter Ego fame) has resulted in a brilliant series of collaborative works with legendary composers such as Luc Ferrari, Alvin Lucier, Arvo Pärt, John Cage, Morton Feldman, László Sáry, Louis Andriessen, Aldo Clementi, Zoltan Jeney, Stefano Scodanibbio, Salvatore Sciarrino, Jonathan Harvey and Kevin Volans. A truly stunning mixture of electronic and longform electro-acoustic pieces, repetitive ethnic rhythms, drones and delay, field recordings, flute and the human voice.

Repeat is the diary of an obsession that has been accompanying me for four long years. Alighiero Boetti, one of the fathers of Italian conceptual art, had fit out along a wall of his house in Rome his most introspective work: The Wall. On this wall he showed, continuously modifying their choice and position, objects and works belonging to his own production or to the one of other artists friends, together with objects he found by chance on the street, family pictures and drawings of his children. In other words, his own world. During the realisation of this project I have been reading “Difference and Repetition” by Gilles Deleuze, which gave me the occasion to ponder on the involvements that bring back to the principle of repetition in music of our time. In a certain sense, Deleuze’s writing allowed me to focus on the importance of repetition as a perceptive fact, and as an experience of listening in accumulation. In the same time, I thought of repetition as difference, as a minimal fact, as trance. This element has been determinant in my activity and allowed me to collaborate during the years with musicians who look at repetition as an exciting experience, both physical and mystic. (Manuel Zurria)

Ars Nova Copenhagen / Paul Hillier FIRST DROP

Conducted by Paul Hillier since 2003, Denmark’s Ars Nova Copenhagen has built an immovable reputation as one of the world’s most versatile and inventive vocal ensembles. First Drop is testament to that spirit; it’s a wide-ranging and ambitious project that interprets the choral work of some of the giants of contemporary classical music, including Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Louis Andriessen, Michael Gordon, David Lang and more. 

 “Almost all the works on this CD are first recordings,” Hillier explains, referring to one source of inspiration behind the title. “Ideally we wanted the idea of First Drop to remain ambiguous, but the diligent listener will sooner or later notice that it originates with Ralph Waldo Emerson.” 

Recorded over a stretch of nearly ten years, in different locations and with different configurations of singers, the performances documented here still come across as parts of a seamless whole. From the haunting strains of Michael Gordon’s “He Saw A Skull” (composed specifically for the 12 voices of Ars Nova) to Hillier’s vocal arrangement of Steve Reich’s classic “Clapping Music,” First Drop channels a vernal energy that’s unparalleled in new vocal music.

Pumeza VOICE OF HOPE

Matshikiza's career would have been unthinkable two decades ago. Today, she is part of a new generation of black South African opera singers. Small and self-contained, she cuts a glamorous figure, not least on the cover of Voice of Hope, her debut recording for Decca. With its mix of Mozart and Puccini arias, smartly orchestrated Xhosa, Swahili and Zulu songs, and the anthem she performed to an audience of a billion in the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony last week, the album is aimed squarely at a crossover audience.

Matshikiza is pragmatic about the mix, pointing out that if she can bring "something a little bit different" to the market, why not? But she is frank about the technical challenges of finding a way of singing that is "not quite operatic", and pulls a face recalling the difficulty of working on the album while also preparing for the role of Nanetta in Verdi's Falstaff for Stuttgart Opera.

The pure, wistful voice that Matshikiza used to sing Freedom Come All Ye in Glasgow is about a quarter the size of her Puccini voice. On the album, her sound in the arias is opulent, glowing. She is reticent about her long-term ambitions, but it's difficult to imagine her following in the crossover footsteps of, say, Katherine Jenkins or Russell Watson. As to Thula Baba, Pata, Pata and the other African songs on the disc, there's both a nod to the chic fusion of jazz and calypso that was Miriam Makeba's signature style in the early 60s – and a sting behind the smile. In Iya Gaduza, an unemployed man paces alone in his house while his wife works for a white family. Even Freedom Come All Ye, written the year of the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, contains a reference to Nyanga, one of the townships where Matshikiza grew up. 

At the centre of the album is South African composer Kevin Volans's Umzi Watsha. Volans met the soprano when she sang in an opera he wrote for Cape Town's Handspring Puppet Theatre (the company behind War Horse's puppets). He urged Matshikiza to audition for the British conservatoires, paying her air fare. Her first stop in London was the Royal College of Music, where she was immediately offered a full scholarship. The Royal Opera House's young artists scheme followed, with roles in The Minotaur, Don Carlo and Hänsel und Gretel. The decision to take things slowly was hers: "I don't understand what the hurry is. I want to sing as best as possible. It doesn't matter when or to whom." At Covent Garden, observation was as vital a part of the learning experience as performance and coaching. Its music director Antonio Pappano remains her model of the ideal, collaborative singers' conductor: "Talking to the soloists, he would say, 'What do you want to do here? I'll follow you', and only then would he suggest what he thinks. When you are a singer that gives you so much security, so much energy." (theguardian.com)