Artist: Anna Christensen

  • John Turner – Christmas Card Carols

    John Turner – Christmas Card Carols

    For over twenty years, Britain’s foremost recorder player, John Turner, has composed a carol and sent the score as his Christmas Card. Until now just a personal gift to his friends, John was persuaded to record a selection, which has led to this beautiful album.

    Presented by the chamber choir Intimate Voices and featuring sopranos Sasha Johnson Manning, Eleanor Gregory and Philippa Hyde in solo and duet pieces, with obbligato harp and oboe in some, this is a lovely mixed program of Nativity carols, composed very much in traditional style, in new settings of ancient texts.

    John Turner is a fine composer but is chiefly known as a recorder player and champion of contemporary composers, with dozens of recordings to his credit, many from Divine Art and Métier.

  • Travelling Light: Music of Jim Parker

    Travelling Light: Music of Jim Parker

    Perhaps the name of Jim Parker is not well known – but his music is loved worldwide. Composer of numerous film and theatre scores, he is best known for his television music which includes Foyle’s War, House of Cards, Midsomer Murders and House of Elliott among many more. He has won the British Academy Award for Best TV Music on no less than four occasions.

    This brilliant album collects a number of Parker’s recent compositions which are not directly for TV but still have a marvelous pictorial quality and display his remarkable talent for memorable melodies and coloration, whether it be the recorder acting like a Peruvian pipe, or violins emulating the Hurdy-Gurdy.

    Light music albums of this quality are very rare these days and this is a joyful gem.