I am a comparative latecomer to writing isntrumental music, having devoted most of my creative life to choral and vocal composition. The works on this album are all written over the last decade, with the exception of my Violin Concerto which plunders material from an incomplete Violin Sonata written when I was eighteen. As well as the Violin Concerto this album includes: my darkly chromatic Clarinet Quintet," The Better Angels of Our Nature," a short concerto for oboe and strings; and "Goodfellow," for flute, oboe and piano. They are presented chronologically and I hope the listener will detect a logical sequence in their development. (Richard Blackford, August 2016)