" ...an engrossing concept album about water, evoked in its various elemental states across a five-part suite bookended with a brief orchestral torrent supplanted by...

" ...an engrossing concept album about water, evoked in its various elemental states across a five-part suite bookended with a brief orchestral torrent supplanted by the resonant ringing of Tibetan temple bowls.” The Independent ****

Tide Harmonic is a new work for small ensemble by the contemporary British composer Joby Talbot. With a compositional aesthetic that threads through his classical and concert works, this disc was born out of a collaboration with choreographer Carolyn Carlson originally entitled Eau. A piece for small ensemble of string quartet, percussion, harp and keyboards (celesta, piano and harmonium), Tide Harmonic is described by its composer as: “… a kind of water symphony that, rather than constructing a poetic or narrative programme inspired by man’s relationship with water, instead focuses on the substance itself, the forces that act upon it, and the energy that flows through and from it”.

This is Signum’s second disc of Talbot’s work, and comes 5 years after Path of Mircales (SIGCD078) with the professional chamber choir Tenebrae:

"From it's opening eerie rising vocal glissando (A Tawainese singing effect called pasiputput) for the gentlemen of Nigel Short's Tenebrae, to the final distribution of the pilgrims having reached Finisterre ... Path of Miracles is little short of a musical miracle in itself. I would go so far as to suggest that this is to the first decade of the 21st century what Arvo Pärt's Passio was twenty years earlier" ClassicalSource.com