A Doll's House: Works for Percussion Ensemble

Ensemble Bash record British works they commissioned

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: David (Vickerman) Bedford, Stewart Copeland, Rachel Leach, Graham Fitkin, Nick Hayes, Stephen Montague, Howard Skempton, Peter McGarr, Keith Tippett

Genre:

Chamber

Label: Signum

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 51

Mastering:

Stereo
DDD

Catalogue Number: SIGCD294

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Shard Graham Fitkin, Composer
Bash Ensemble
Graham Fitkin, Composer
Slip-stream Howard Skempton, Composer
Bash Ensemble
Howard Skempton, Composer
Rimfire Stephen Montague, Composer
Bash Ensemble
Stephen Montague, Composer
Bash Peace David (Vickerman) Bedford, Composer
Bash Ensemble
David (Vickerman) Bedford, Composer
Dance Play Nick Hayes, Composer
Bash Ensemble
Nick Hayes, Composer
Sound Asleep Peter McGarr, Composer
Bash Ensemble
Peter McGarr, Composer
Breather Stewart Copeland, Composer
Bash Ensemble
Stewart Copeland, Composer
Echolalia Rachel Leach, Composer
Bash Ensemble
Rachel Leach, Composer
Dance of the Dragonfly Keith Tippett, Composer
Bash Ensemble
Keith Tippett, Composer
‘A Doll’s House’ is a collection of mostly short (two- to six-minute) and refreshingly varied pieces by British composers born between 1943 and 1973, commissioned and performed by the percussion quartet Ensemble Bash, now celebrating its 20th anniversary. Their crisp precision and commitment to each work is abetted by vividly close-up and detailed engineering plus rapid DJ-like segues between selections that create a seamless, sustained programme.

Listeners familiar with Graham Fitkin’s post-minimalist mastery or Howard Skempton’s stark delicacy will know what to expect from their opening contributions, although the non-verbal vocalisations and cowbell effects throughout Stephen Montague’s Rimfire reveal an airy, whimsical side to a composer I know more for his driving intensity. The late David Bedford’s Bash Peace is a lilting, evocative duet for steel pans, leading into Nick Hayes’s Dance Play for marimba, vibraphones and drum-set, which is essentially a samba with quirky rhythmic parantheses. By contrast, Peter McGarr’s Sound Asleep is a collage incorporating a multitude of instruments and non-instruments from glass chimes and pitch pipes to wine glass and egg slicer.

While Stewart Copeland’s Breather is light and improvisatory, Rachel Leach’s Echolalia rigorously manipulates repeated phrases from one instrument to another. The facile fingerwork and melodic sophistication characterising veteran jazz pianist/composer Keith Tippett’s instrumental prowess replicates itself over the 15-minute course of this programme’s concluding work, Dance of the Dragonfly, which abounds in twitchy yet virtuoso single lines, sudden explosions into free jazz, silences where you don’t expect them, shimmering fills from shakers and subtle, low-lying tremolos.

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