Vocal Works 1974-2015

Fantasies ... about music, about love and death, about the voice. Recorded in 2015 and 2016, mixed and mastered in 2017 and 2018 this album with the the general title ,, Michael Finnissy" brings together four of the most virtuosic and spectacular works ever written for vocal ensemble. Spanning four decades of Michael Finnissy's career: EXAUDI's programme presents two works from the mid-1970s, Cipriano and Tom Fool's Wooing, in which extreme vocal gymnastics are given an urgently erotic charge. Kelir (1981) is a powerful vocal tableau of Xenakis-like intensity, made from the syllables of Javanese ritual formulae. The more recent Gesualdo: Libro Sesto (2012-13) engages with the tortured madrigalism of the Italian master, presenting what Finnissy describes as 'fantasies...about music, about love and death, about the voice.'