Artist: James Hesford

Date of Release: 01/08/2005

Catalogue no: 186

Label: WCM (Working Classical Music)

Price: £8

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Track Listing

Appearances by

cellorhythmics

James Hesford

Soundtrack from David Almond's play "Heaven Eyes". The album was a commissioned piece by POP-UP Theatre who performed the play and the Edinbugh Fringe August 2005.

Reviews

01/08/2005 Jane Ellis – The Scotsman

"music adds wonderfully dark layers"

01/07/2005 Daily Mail

"Unique music"

04/12/0005 Euan Dixon (Jazz Views)

'HEAVEN EYES" - Subtitled “Soundtrack by James Hesford” this latest release by the resourceful Cellorhythmics is a suite of incidental music composed for a dramatisation of David Almond’s Heaven Eyes, a morality tale for older children that was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer. As a piece of stand-alone music it contains sufficient of those ingredients that have made the group’s last two releases so pleasurable to warrant purchase by those who have no interest in the play or the book from which it was derived but equally it would of course make a nice souvenir for those who have.

If anything is lacking it is the jazz element, for here- no doubt in respect of the storyline- the focus is on world music influences in which melodies of a Balkan and Far-Eastern nature predominate. Hesford, as ever, mixes his musical palette with great skill and just when you are starting to get acquainted with a particular line of musical development he switches gear and introduces an another element – perhaps a chant or some exotic percussion- to spice up the concoction. Tuneful and easy on the ear each piece is also beautifully played, often displaying a harmonic sophistication that belies the apparent simplicity of the music.