Deirdre Gribbin: Island People

This new release features Deirdre Gribbin's works for string quartet with voice. Born in Belast, the composer's Catholic background, identification with Celtic folk tradition, fascination for myth, and love of remote landscapes have all influenced her music.

The title work features soprano Patricia Rozario – who has inspired composers including Arvo Pärt and Sir John Tavener to write for her – with the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, in their first recording for NMC. With trumpeter Mark O'Keeffe they perform Island People, a song-cycle setting verses by Irish poet Seamus Heaney.

This is accompanied by Crossing the Sea for mezzo – sung by Loré Lixenberg – and quartet, setting an extended sequence of 7th-century Chinese poems exploring the loss of war, premiered at London's Wiltons Music Hall. The recording is completed by two works for quartet alone, Merrow Sang - depicting a supernatural sea-burial – and What the Whaleship Saw, inspired by an 1820 shipwreck and its grisly aftermath.

Lore Lixenberg mezzo-soprano
Patricia Rozario soprano
Mark O'Keeffe trumpet
Cliona Doris harp
RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet

AUDIO

REVIEWS

CMC IRELAND CD OF THE MONTH 

'Impressive playing, passionate and sensitive by turns, from the RTE Vanbrugh Quartet ... cordially recommended to Gribbin admirers and newcomers alike' Gramophone

'A disc of works inspired by the sea – the magic of mermaids, the Blasket and Aran islands, the imagination of Seamus Heaney and the whaling disaster that inspired Moby Dick. The ever-changing sea in Deirdre Gribbin's five pieces sprays, shimmers and churns' Irish Times

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