Various Artists: The Passing Sound of Forever – welcome to Jane O’Leary’s sound-world

The Passing Sound of Forever
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Artist: Concorde; Madeleine Staunton; Paul Roe; Elaine Clarke; David Bremner; Andreja Malir; Martin Johnson; ConTempo Quartet; Jane O'Leary
Genre: Children's Music
Label: Navona Records

Hartford-born Jane O'Leary has been living in Ireland for 45 years. She arrived as a serialist under the influence of one of her teachers, Milton Babbitt. And she has since become a more meditative, more moody, sometimes impressionistic composer.

The investigatory mulling-over of sonorities is as much a part of her style now as the angularities of the mid-20th century avant-garde once were. The six chamber works here – A Way Through; No 19; murmurs and echoes; A Winter Sketchbook; . . . from hand to hand . . . ; the passing sound of forever . . . – are as varied in inspiration as their titles suggest.

The hand-picked players, most of them from her own ensemble, Concorde, are finely attuned to the colourings of her sound-world.

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Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor