HANNAH PEEL & PARAORCHESTRA
THE UNFOLDING - OUT ON 1 APRIL 2022
VIA REAL WORLD RECORDS
LIVE PERFORMANCES SPRING 2022
ASSEMBLY ROOMS - EDINBURGH
SAGE - GATESHEAD
BARBICAN - LONDON
Hannah Peel & Paraorchestra with Charles Hazlewood's major new work, The Unfolding, is set for release on 1 April 2022 via Real World Records.
The Unfolding is an extraordinary eight-part collaboration between Mercury and Emmy nominated Northern Irish composer Hannah Peel and Bristol’s Paraorchestra, recorded in precious morsels of time around the global pandemic. There are pieces of music that seek to tell us deeper stories. Others harness the talents of the players at their disposal in adventurous ways. Then there are the rare, generous works that make us think back to our roots as human beings and to our shared beginnings in the universe, that lift us in their melodies, rhythms and textures, that carry us with them. The Unfolding is all of these things.
The Unfolding also explores Paraorchestra’s progressive idea of what an orchestra should be, mixing analogue, digital and assistive instruments with a unique ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians to make magic happen.
The collaboration’s roots go back when Paraorchestra’s Artistic Director, Charles Hazlewood, met Peel to ask if she’d consider writing for them. By the time they met up in Bristol for research and development sessions, Peel had already been digging deep into ideas of time and the cosmos in albums like 2016’s Awake But Always Dreaming, 2017’s Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia and her 2019 collaboration with poet Will Burns, Chalk Hill Blue. Now she was becoming increasingly fascinated in life cycles on Earth, with influence from Jacquetta Hawkes’ poetic history of Britain from 1951, A Land, and Robert Macfarlane’s contemporary book, Underland, an exploration of deep time and the underworld.
Peel knew she wanted the album to be driven by sounds that suggested the primal roots of ourselves and sought inspiration from Paraorchestra’s players. She loved the low woodwind played by Lloyd Coleman (“he’s a massive part of it…the work really evolved around him and that sound world”) and the twitching, fluttering recorders of James Risdon (“they have this real, woody, early music energy”). Central too was the “amazing” drumming of Jonny Leitch, influenced by his love of heavy rock and trapeze artistry, and the voice of soprano Victoria Oruwari, which provides moments of serene beauty in the rawness. “Her voice, her spirit, her magic, her beauty as a human as well as an artist is off the scale,” Peel says.
The Unfolding was recorded at Real World Studios in Wiltshire. The perfect place, Peel says, for The Unfolding to emerge, not only because the studios are accessible for all musicians, but also because they were “surrounded by nature… you step outside, and it's like life again.”
In that place and in these tracks, you can hear a composer and an orchestra exploring the idea of evolution in music – but you can also hear something else. You can also hear them evolving together, creating something new, and planting fresh roots from which the cycle of creativity can keep reviving itself.
“The Unfolding is almost a life form in itself”, Peel smiles, “taken from the muddy cells of the earth and taking flight into the air then returning to the elements. It’s like a character in itself. It’s a new way of seeing.”
The Unfolding by Hannah Peel & Paraorchestra is released on 1 April 2022 on Real World Records and is available to pre-order on CD, double vinyl, and double vinyl Dinked Edition from today. Artwork is by Barnbrook.
THE UNFOLDING LIVE - 2022
5 May - Edinburgh Assembly Rooms
6 May - Gateshead Sage
21 May - London Barbican
Tickets are on sale now
EDITORS NOTES
Paraorchestra
Paraorchestra create large scale and dynamic music experiences, blending artforms and technology to create innovative new ways of experiencing orchestral music. They are as at home playing Philip Glass’s Heroes Symphony headlining a main stage at Glastonbury Festival, or taking a 70-piece ensemble playing banging pop tunes through the streets of Bristol, as they are filming a secret gig with Brett Anderson, or Beethoven’s 5th Symphony for Sky Arts broadcast.
Their ensembles feature professional disabled and non-disabled musicians, playing a mix of analogue, digital, and assistive instruments. Paraorchestra are not only radically changing who connects with orchestral music, but, shifting the perception of disability by removing the outdated barriers that too often prevent a showcase of excellence in disabled players.
Paraorchestra create large scale and dynamic music experiences, blending artforms and technology to create innovative new ways of experiencing orchestral music. They are as at home playing Philip Glass’s Heroes Symphony headlining a main stage at Glastonbury Festival, or taking a 70-piece ensemble playing banging pop tunes through the streets of Bristol, as they are filming a secret gig with Brett Anderson, or Beethoven’s 5th Symphony for Sky Arts broadcast.
Their ensembles feature professional disabled and non-disabled musicians, playing a mix of analogue, digital, and assistive instruments. Paraorchestra are not only radically changing who connects with orchestral music, but, shifting the perception of disability by removing the outdated barriers that too often prevent a showcase of excellence in disabled players.
Hannah Peel
Hannah Peel is a Northern Irish artist, composer, producer and broadcaster who sits on the Ivors Academy board and is Belfast Music Patron following its City of Music status by UNESCO. Often inspired by the connections between science and music, her solo record career includes the shortlisted 2021 Mercury Music Prize electronic album, Fir Wave; 2016's Awake But Always Dreaming, which became an ode to her grandmother’s mind as she lived with dementia; and connecting our brain neurons to stars in our solar system, the space-themed Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia, scored for synthesisers and a 30 piece colliery brass band.
A regular collaborator with Paul Weller, in 2018 she conducted and wrote all the orchestral arrangements for his shows at London's Royal Festival Hall and contributed to his new no.1 album ‘On Sunset’. A year later Peel composed and recorded the soundtrack for Game of Thrones: The Last Watch which earned her a 2019 Emmy nomination for ‘Outstanding Music Composition For A Documentary Series Or Special (Original Dramatic Score)’ In 2020 she created the soundtrack for BBC documentary, L’ee Miller - A Life On The Frontline’ and scored the 4-part Channel 5 TV thriller ‘The Deceived’. Hannah is also a regular presenter on the BBC Radio 3 show, Night Tracks.
Charles Hazlewood
Award-winning British conductor Charles Hazlewood has worked with many of the world's greatest orchestras (including Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, The Philharmonia, Swedish Radio Symphony, Danish Radio Symphony); he has played Carnegie Hall, the BBC Proms, and multiple festivals throughout the world. Charles has collaborated with artists as diverse as Nigel Kennedy, Professor Green, Squarepusher and Wyclef Jean, has conducted over 200 world premieres and won the Berlin Film Festival 'Golden Bear' for Best Film with his South African township opera company's U Carmen e-Khayelitsha. Charles founded and is Artistic Director of Paraorchestra: the world's first large-scale professional ensemble of virtuoso disabled and non-disabled musicians, has authored, presented and conducted the music in multiple landmark films for BBCTV and Sky Arts (on Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, amongst others, as well as The Beatles, Badly Drawn Boy, and Minimalism); he has won three Sony Radio Academy Awards for his shows on BBC Radio 2 and 3, composed the scores for the South African Mysteries, Dead Dog In A Suitcase (And Other Love Songs) - a new Beggar’s Opera, and a new opera The Tin Drum (these last two both Kneehigh). He has three TED talks to his name, was a recent Castaway on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, and is Sky Arts’ Ambassador for Music.
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