Jean-Claude Picard, The Royal Scottish National Orchestra - Bigham: Staffa (2017)

Staffa is an island in Scottish Hebrides, scenic but uninhabited, that was the subject of a music video project by composer Ned Bigham and visual artist Gerry Fox. It closes the album here, and even without the video element it's an effective piece, with vague overtones of Mendelssohn's famous Hebrides music. Bigham has backgrounds in classical music, electronica, and acid jazz. The latter two influences are subtle but present here: the overall effect is of a late Romantic composer who has heard minimalism and contemporary electronic music of various kinds. Bigham is an adept handler of the orchestra, including a piano in the first set of Archipelago Dances. Sample "Halmahera": the title is the name of an island in Indonesia's Maluku province, but the dance rhythm, the bachata, comes from the Dominican Republic, and the other movements have similar puzzling mismatches among title, locale, and dance. They are, however, effective and fresh instances of the nature tone poem, a genre neglected in recent years. Recommended.