Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Helen Grime
Bright Travellers (2017)
- Chester Music Ltd (World)
Commissioned by Wigmore Hall with the support of André Hoffmann, President of the Fondation Hoffmann, a Swiss grant-making foundation.
Programme Note
ii. Brew
iii. Visitations
iv. Milk Fever
v. Council Offices
I came across Fiona Benson’s collection ‘Bright Travellers’ by chance not long after I’d given birth to my son. I was very taken and moved by the series of poems about pregnancy and early motherhood and knew instantly that I wanted to set them. The poems are direct, sometimes funny and achingly beautiful and have a natural musicality about them. Writing this set of five songs was an extremely intense and sometimes emotional experience for me, as the poems move between a huge range of emotions from hope and joy to great sadness.
Programme note by Helen Grime
Media
Reviews
Two 2017 songs by Helen Grime stood out: 'Milk Fever', in which a rippling high piano line celebrates the lactating body, and 'Council Offices', a lullaby for a stillborn child that ends with the voice entirely, heartbreakingly alone.
[Ruby Hughes] brings out the variety of Grime’s writing, from the mercurial rippling of Brew – “multiplying cells like pearls” – to the darting anxieties of Milk Fever and the grey pain of Council Offices.
Grime’s musical language in her new cycle is immediately engaging and evocative, reflecting with tenderness and unerring skill the different worlds and feelings of Fiona Benson’s strikingly honest poetry.... ...an important addition to a repertory where parenthood is invariably seen from the father’s perspective.
Discography
dream.risk.sing
- LabelDelphian
- Catalogue NumberDCD34279
- SoloistLana Bode, soprano; Samantha Crawford, piano
- Released29th September 2023
Songs for New Life and Love
- LabelBIS Records
- Catalogue NumberBIS-2468 SACD
- SoloistRuby Hughes, soprano; Joseph Middleton, piano
- Released6th August 2021