EXAUDI: Pocket Universe

Release date: 18 September 2026

Pocket Universe is a compelling new recording from the internationally acclaimed vocal ensemble EXAUDI and conductor James Weeks, featuring works by Cassandra Miller, Andrew Hamilton, Leo Chadburn and Geoff Hannan.

Bringing together four works commissioned and premiered by EXAUDI between 2013 and 2019 through the ensemble’s EXPOSURE showcase, Pocket Universe captures the remarkable artistic relationships the ensemble has forged with some of the most distinctive compositional voices working today. Over more than two decades, EXAUDI has become one of the world’s leading advocates for contemporary vocal music, appearing at major international festivals and venues including Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wien Modern, MusikFest Berlin, IRCAM Paris and the BBC Proms, while building an acclaimed discography on labels including Winter&Winter, Kairos, ÆON and NMC. 

Canadian-British composer Cassandra Miller has emerged as one of the defining musical voices of her generation, praised for music of striking emotional intensity and transformative beauty. Her work Guide, inspired by a remembered folk hymn and written especially for EXAUDI, becomes a radiant meditation on communal singing, freedom and the ecstatic physicality of the voice itself.

Irish composer Andrew Hamilton, elected to Aosdána in 2024 and recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists, has developed an internationally celebrated body of work performed by ensembles including Crash Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. His Proclamation of the Republic reimagines Patrick Pearse’s Easter Rising declaration through obsessive repetition, fractured rhetoric and surging vocal momentum.

Leo Chadburn’s genre-defying output spans contemporary composition, electronic music, installation art and experimental pop. Broadcast internationally on BBC Radio and created in collaboration with artists ranging from Pulp to Cerith Wyn Evans, Chadburn’s work is marked by an unmistakable theatricality and fascination with language. In Affix Stamp Here, fragments from vintage postcards are transformed into poignant, delicate and unexpectedly moving musical miniatures.

Completing the album is Geoff Hannan’s virtuosic Pocket Universe, winner of an Ivor Novello Composer Award in 2019. Performed internationally by ensembles including the London Sinfonietta and National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Hannan’s music combines rigorous structural thinking with explosive rhythmic energy. Drawing on texts by Galileo and Newton, Pocket Universe propels its singers through an exhilarating landscape of repetition, discovery and vocal extremity.

Together, these four works celebrate the limitless expressive possibilities of the human voice while reaffirming EXAUDI’s vital role at the forefront of contemporary music-making internationally.

Cassandra Miller, Andrew Hamilton, Leo Chadburn, Geoff Hannan

EXAUDI, James Weeks

Format: CD, download, streaming

FUNDERS

EXAUDI gratefully acknowledges support for this recording from Boltini Trust, Vaughan Williams Foundation, Hinrichsen Foundation, Francis Routh Trust.

This recording is partially funded by Elaine Gould from her royalties earned from Behind Bars, The Definite Guide to Music Notation, behindbarsnotation.co.uk.

NMC Recordings would like to thank: 

RECORDING CREDITS