Alison Balsam

Edward Gregson is a composer of international standing whose music has been performed, broadcast, and commercially recorded worldwide. Gregson is renowned for his concertos and music for band, but his chamber music reveals a more enquiring voice. In recent years these works have been enriched with greater expressive and emotional depth, ranging here from youthful impressionism to the fearsome virtuosity of Triptych, a competition test piece. Gregson’s First String Quartet was acclaimed by one critic as ‘an extraordinary work, both gritty and serene’, while the evocative colours of the Second are framed by the gentle lilt of a Siciliana.

After her 1999 gold release, Forget About It, Alison Krauss has found additional success as part of the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?–an album that's done more to advance the cause of bluegrass since Bill Monroe first conjured the music out of the hills of western Kentucky. While Forget About It showcased the more contemporary part of Krauss's musical equation and the O Brother soundtrack spotlighted the more traditional, New Favorite combines the approaches in balancing the softer sounds with the rougher-edged material.