Prepare to embark on a journey of sonic wonder with hear now berlin's debut album, MUSIC in CIRCLES. Featuring works by some of the most exciting composers of our time, this album is a celebration of music's boundless potential for human expression and emotion.
Released June 2, 2023
Credits:
Kelly Watson Woelffer: flute, alto flute
Jens Thoben: clarinet, bass clarinet
Paul Hübner: trumpet, flugelhorn
Meike-Lu Schneider: violin
Alexina Hawkins: viola
Edward King: cello
Recorded March 2022
at Traumton Records Berlin
Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by Justus Beyer
Artwork: The God of Small Things 19 by Ruprecht von Kaufmann
Design: Dan Abbott
At the heart of the album lies Andrew Norman's Music in Circles, a mesmerizing work that takes us on a journey through a hall of mirrors. With its symmetrical structure and recurring refracted scale motif, the piece invites us to contemplate the infinite and the eternal.
Gabriella Smith's Maré is a masterful exercise in organic evolution, as shimmering textures give way to ominous growls and ecstatic washes of sound. Caroline Shaw's Draft of a High-Rise is a work of stunning virtuosity and complexity, a musical kaleidoscope of sweeping melodies, warm harmonies, and jittery passages.Nathan Schram's HNB is a true highlight of the album, a funky and full-throttle ride through feel-good soundscapes that demands the utmost from its virtuosic performers. And hear now berlin's flutist and founder, Kelly Watson Woelffer, contributes her own powerful work, the (un)raveling, a reflection on the challenges of motherhood and creativity during thepandemic.
Throughout the album, the musicians of hear now berlin deliver performances of exquisite precision and emotional depth, capturing a wide range of human experience, from fragility to risk, from simplicity to complexity.