Brave New Works - The Outer Bar (2020)

The Outer Bar is the second AMP Recordings release for the nationally recognized performing ensemble Brave New Works. The ensemble of 10 musicians demonstrate their spirit of adventure in new music with vibrant performances of works by composers Andrew Mead and Robert Morris.

Robert Morris composed Channing Fragments for soprano and eight instruments for Brave New Works. It sets fragments of three of William Ellery Channing’s shorter poems.

Andrew Mead’s Flute Quartet is a light-hearted and playful, constantly changing mosaic that is variously distributed among the three strings and flute.

Vynes for flute and piano by Robert Morris, is written for a consortium of gifted flutists who have distinguished themselves as dedicated performers of new music.

The release gets its title from the poem, The Outer Bar, set in Andrew Mead’s Far Cry: Four Poems of Amy Clampitt, composed for Brave New Works. Mead was dawn to the author’s imagery, and the richness of her syntax and sounds in her poems about the coast of Maine.