Beaufort Scales – Christopher Cerrone (Lorelei Ensemble)
Rebecca Tavener
Monday, March 10, 2025
A stunning celebration for vocals and electronics of the winds swirling across the seas.

Breeze, zephyr, gust, current, draught: all kinds of wind-on-water effects make up the Beaufort Scale. Cerrone finds poetry in the 19th-century Admiral’s science, adding tropes from the likes of F Scott Fitzgerald, Herman Melville and St Matthew’s Gospel, in a stunning celebration for vocals and electronics of the winds swirling across the seas. Exceptionally involving, enwrapping, immersive, the eight outstanding, focused female voices perform with impressive cohesion, precision and expression. This brief 11-movement voyage carries the listener from a calm mirror-like sea to ‘air filled with foam and spray’, then casts one ashore, curiously cleansed.