Mark Simpson

Storytelling and making – craft and narrative, and the ways in which they are both enabled and complicated by the presence of music – lie at the heart of Matthew Kaner’s compositional world, as revealed on this debut album devoted to his work.

A stunning pairing of Mozart’s glorious ‘Gran Partita’ Serenade with a work written specifically to be performed alongside it, Geysir by the exceptional clarinettist-composer, Mark Simpson. Mark Simpson’s simmering, volcanic Geysir was inspired by the rich opening chord of Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’, and by its bubbling clarinet writing, which develop into what Simpson describes as a “flurry of colour and harmonic shifts”.

Alchymia is a 2021 quintet for basset clarinet and strings by Thomas Adès composed for Mark Simpson and Quatuor Diotima. At its premiere it was Adès’ most substantial new chamber work in over a decade, following The Four Quarters (2010). Its title – the Latin word for alchemy, from the Arabic kīmiyā – evokes two complementary postures: speculative, mystical capriciousness and experimental precision.

A stunning pairing of Mozart’s glorious ‘Gran Partita’ Serenade with a work written specifically to be performed alongside it, Geysir by the exceptional clarinettist-composer, Mark Simpson. Mark Simpson’s simmering, volcanic Geysir was inspired by the rich opening chord of Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’, and by its bubbling clarinet writing, which develop into what Simpson describes as a “flurry of colour and harmonic shifts”.

Rick Simpson’s impeccable technique and restless imagination have earned him a place at the forefront of contemporary UK music. He’s equally at home exploring the tradition or pushing fearlessly against the boundaries, and now his unique creative voice is back in the spotlight with a typically idiosyncratic project: a re-framing of Radiohead’s Kid A album, featuring ten original arrangements of the source material played by an all-star band of like-minded musical mavericks.

Some records not only desire your attention, they demand it. Think of Miles or Trane or Mingus and think of just puttering around the house as the music plays. It can't be done. The grandmasters of jazz made music that required it be heard and not merely listened to. Out of A Dream is not one of those records.