The King's Singers - Wonderland (2023) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Ashita no uta
02. Nonsense Madrigals: I. Two Dreams and Little Bat
03. A Dream within a Dream
04. Nonsense Madrigals: II. Cuckoo in the Pear-Tree
05. Alive
06. Nonsense Madrigals: III. The Alphabet
07. I Was There
08. Nonsense Madrigals: IV. Flying Robert
09. Tricksters
10. Nonsense Madrigals: V. The Lobster Quadrille
11. The Musicians of Bremen
12. Nonsense Madrigals: VI. A Long, Sad Tale
13. Time Piece



Wonderland is full of magic and myth. Containing exclusively works commissioned by The King’s Singers across their 55 years, the album celebrates their trademark musical storytelling, with no shortage of comedy. György Ligeti’s six Nonsense Madrigals, each setting playful children’s poetry or extracts from Lewis

Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, provide a musical spine to the album, commemorating 100 years since the composer’s birth in 1923. From just over 50 years ago, the fairytale The Musicians of Bremen (1972) - set to music by the Australian composer and Master of the Queen’s Music Malcolm Williamson -sits alongside Time Piece (1972) by Paul Patterson, which tells an eccentric alternative creation story. These myth-based works have recent companions such as Judith Bingham’s extended work Tricksters (2019), which unearths what could happen if miscreants from different world mythologies could come together for the first time, and Ola Gjeilo’s A Dream within a Dream which questions the very nature of perception
and reality. The album also features the legendary Japanese film and game composer Joe Hisaishi’s first ever choral work, I was there (2022), focussing on the cultural memory of tragic events such as 9/11 and the 2011

Japan Earthquake. Themes of hope and positivity, centred on the natural world, emerge in Makiko Kinoshita’s Ashita no uta (Song for tomorrow) (2020) and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Alive (2022).

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