For evidence of the blurred boundaries that keep shifting between music for the concert hall and compositions written for film and media, look no further than Julie Cooper. ‘Oculus’ may be Cooper’s second album for Signum (the first, ‘Continuum’, was released a couple of years ago – 5/22), but it forms part of an impressive creative legacy that encompasses over a dozen albums, reflecting Cooper’s varied background as a classically trained musician of pop sensibilities with extensive experience of composing soundtracks for film and television.

If the genres are often blurred in Cooper’s music, ‘Oculus’ radiates a clarity of sound and vision that resonates with the album’s central subject matter. According to the composer, the oculus – a glass skylight at the top of a dome – acts as a window into the universe. Likewise, Cooper’s album acts as a window upon the composer’s vivid, ethereal and illuminating sound world, as heard in the shimmering surface textures of Moonglade in Jet Black, featuring Joby Burgess on space harp, the deeply resonant shakuhachi-like timbres of Eliza Marshall’s bass flute in Angel in Dark Green, or the Einaudi-like Ascensio for solo piano, played with restrained elegance by Rebeca Omordia.

The most intriguing moments on ‘Oculus’ nevertheless belong to pieces that appear to elude obvious categorisation. Folk-like Renaissance-style recombinations can be heard in Cooper’s setting of Christina Rosetti’s 1862 poem ‘Echo’ – think Clemens non Papa meets Irish band Clannad – with soprano Grace Davidson and TikTok close-harmony vocalist Anna Hale’s glowing voices placed front and centre. Likewise, the dance-inspired four-movement Renaissance Suite shifts disarmingly from pulsing Baroque-style minimalism to the panoramic melodic sweep of Vaughan Williams’s English pastoral style via a theme that would not sound out of place in the music for the TV drama series Bridgerton.

With the Oculus Ensemble exuding a warm sound throughout, telling contributions from harpist Camilla Pay, violinist Clio Gould and cellist Cara Berridge and a lovely cameo role for impressive treble Joshua Davidson in Cooper’s evocative setting of Percy Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’, the sky is surely the limit for this celestial-sounding music.