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.
