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Andrew Keeling is a multi-faceted composer, whose works have been performed and broadcast throughout the world by musicians such as Dame Evelyn Glennie, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Fretwork, Craig Ogden, Jacob Heringman and many others. His music has been released by DGM, Burning Shed, Metier, Riverrun, UHR and Spaceward. He is also a songwriter and improviser and has written, collaborated and released albums with musicians such as David Cross (King Crimson), Stephen Fellows (Comsat Angels) and Tim Bowness (No-Man). Andrew also has a particular interest in the music of King Crimson and has written three Musical Guides on the band’s music as well as orchestrating the music of Robert Fripp. An album of these performed by the Metropole Orchestra of Amsterdam, is projected for release in 2012. He has also been a lecturer at the University of Liverpool and the Royal Northern College of Music.
Bells of Heaven (due for release on Monday 12th March 2012) is the ‘shadow’ side of Andrew Keeling’s activities as a composer. Although known for his contemporary classical music – his album Unquiet Earth (Spaceward Records) is released in June, 2012 – Keeling is also a composer of a quite different kind of music. The title track of this collection, Weak and Helpless and the multi-sectional In the Pages of Mathilda, display a hard edge while Avarice, Otherworld, Neurosis and Twenty Turbines display Keeling’s interest in electric folk. The melodic beauty of Narcissus of Decor, The Great Divides and Nostalgia balance the harder-edged tracks. While some may connect Bells of Heaven to the progressive rock genre, particularly as Keeling has arranged the music and, as musicologist, written widely about Robert Fripp and King Crimson, he refuses to acknowledge any connection to that field. And whilst the ‘& Otherworld’ name might suggest a band, Keeling likes to think of the album more as a collaborative effort. Guest appearances from Stephen Fellows (Comsat Angels), Tim Bowness (No-Man), violist Susanna Pell (Fretwork) and lutenist Jacob Heringman, violinist Charlotte Dowding, vocalist Jane Wilkinson and featuring words from poet/author Alison Prince, makes Bells of Heaven something of a diverse musical offering
Unquiet Earth (due for release on Monday 11th June 2012) is scored for piano, violin and cello and is a musical response to the last paragraph of Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights. The work has two almost improvisatory movements. A fragmentary slow introduction leads to a quicker, boisterous section as the movement unwinds into tender introspection. The second movement injects new rhythmic energy in the form of a restless, awkward jig, until a slow, serene lament emerges, which dissolves into deep meditation.
The string quartet Present is a substantial work which shares the grandeur of the great chamber works of Beethoven and Schubert, but does not directly mimic their style. The music was inspired by Alison Prince’s poem All This Time. The quartet has a questioning, restless quality, but also a sense that divine presence is close by, even if often revealed in unlikely ways. The quartet is in four movements. The atmospheric Beacon Hill recalls a walk made by the composer to the summit of the wooded hill which rises above the Lake District town of Penrith. The music unfolds like a slow, funereal sarabande over a ground-bass, but gradually rises to an ecstatic climax. At this point, the melancholy mood abruptly returns. Perhaps the most unusual and innovative work on the disc is You Cut the String written for Steve Bingham’s unique five-string electric violin and sound-loops. Commissioned by and dedicated to Steve Bingham, the music is made up from eight multi-tracked sound-loops which are, one by one, hypnotically superimposed to create what the composer calls “a gradually accumulating rhythmic mobile”.
