Tarik O'Regan: Voices

http://ladiscotecaclasica.blogspot.com/2011/04/tarik-oregan-voices.html

About the Composer

Born in London in 1978, Tarik O'Regan was educated at Oxford University and subsequently at Cambridge. His work has garnered two 2009 GRAMMY® nominations (including Best Classical Album) and two British Composer Awards.

He has held the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship at Columbia University and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard. Other appointments in recent years include positions at Trinity and Corpus Christi Colleges in Cambridge, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Yale University.

2010 marked the premiere of O'Regan's BBC Proms commission, Latent Manifest, by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the broadcast of a self-penned documentary, Composing New York, which he presented for BBC Radio.

2011 sees the opening of Heart of Darkness, his opera based on Joseph Conrad's novel of the same name, at the Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre and the release of Acallam Na Senórach, his third album on the Harmonia Mundi label.

About this record

The 27-year-old British composer Tarik O'Regan won the vocal category at last year's British Composer Awards and, listening to this disc of his choral music, one can hear why. In a largely tonal, or at least modal language, he breathes new life into the motet idiom, adding the agitating voice of a cello among the plainsong variations of his Magnificat and Nunc dimittis settings, for example. The most substantial work is Dorchester Canticles, with an inventive accompaniment of harp, percussion and organ underlying vocal settings of psalm texts that are both sensitive and pungent in their expressive range. The disc spirals to its end in the purely instrumental Colimacon for organ, which organist James McVinnie despatches with great vitality. The singing from the mixed-voice Clare College Choir is beautifully fresh and refined, too. Collegium's founder, John Rutter, is credited as producer and engineer, and the recording captures the performers in suitably spacious but not over-resonant acoustics. MATTHEW RYE

FIVE STARS

At just 27, Tarik O'Regan has all the trappings of a new star in the classical music firmament - a significant clutch of published chamber, orchestral and vocal works, commissions and performances from major names...and a very healthy list of work in progress, plus critical acclaim and winning place in the Vocal Category of the 2005 British Composer Awards. VOICES, a collection of 13 choral pieces with organ closer, confirms the picture of a brilliantly imaginative and confident composer with a distinctive approach. CLARE MACKNEY