Tom Hicks - Camden Reeves: Blue Sounds (2022) [Official Digital Download 24/48]

Blue Sounds is a set of meditations on a color - from its abstractness as an electromagnetic wave to Blues as a scale, a genre and a harmonic structure. All three works were written for Tom Hicks and mark a growth in fluency and an experimental approach to the sonority of the piano. Camden Reeves has written for several instrumental groupings but the piano has been a vital part of his life since the age of 5. Included amongst his many activities, he was appointed Composition Fellow with the Hallé orchestra at the age of 22 and is currently Head of Music and Senior Lecturer in Composition at the University of Manchester. Hailed as an artist of ‘magnificent pianism’, Guernsey-born pianist Tom Hicks has been praised for his ‘gorgeously creative playing’ that ‘transports the listener to another place and time’. Hicks is a gold medalist in numerous national and international competitions and holds degrees and awards from The University of Manchester, The Royal Northern College of Music, Yale University and Northwestern University, where he now lectures. His first disc featuring John Ireland’s Sarnia, ‘Tom Hicks: Ireland and Tchaikovsky’ has been described as ‘brilliantly evocative’ by Colin Clarke in International Piano, and ‘gorgeously creative’ by Scott Noriega in Fanfare. This new album follows his March 2022 album centered around the Liszt and Ireland piano sonatas and works by Clarke, Coleridge-Taylor and Stanford.

Guernsey-born pianist Tom Hicks has been hailed as ‘an artist of magnificent pianism’; he has established himself as a brilliant soloist, has won multiple awards and is also very sought after for accompaniment and chamber recitals in the UK and USA and around Europe. This will be his first album for Metier.

Meticulous in detail, dramatic in structure and with a touch of the bizarre, the music of Camden Reeves ranges from chamber, to vocal, to orchestral. His name has also become particularly associated with the piano.

Reeves was born in Oxford in 1974. At the age of four he began learning music with his grandfather, a Jazz musician. Reeves read music at the University of Exeter, studying composition with Philip Grange, and at the age of just 22 was appointed Composer Fellow with the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester. Further Composition studies followed with Roger Marsh and David Blake at the University of York. In 2000-2001, Reeves was awarded a CIMO Scholarship to study with Paavo Heininen on a CIMO Fellowship at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and he still cites his engagement with the music of Sibelius during this period as one of the most important influences underlying the organic and dramatic structure of his music.

Tracklist:
1. Tangle-Beat Blues (12:46)
2. Blue Sounds for Piano (11:10)
3. 9 Preludes: No. 1, Allegro molto (01:34)
4. 9 Preludes: No. 2, Grave (01:05)
5. 9 Preludes: No. 3, Adagio molto rubato (01:55)
6. 9 Preludes: No. 4, Allegro scherzando (02:34)
7. 9 Preludes: No. 5, Andante con moto (01:51)
8. 9 Preludes: No. 6, Prestissimo (02:33)
9. 9 Preludes: No. 7, Mesto (01:09)
10. 9 Preludes: No. 8, Allegro ritmico (04:33)
11. 9 Preludes: No. 9, Tempo di ciaccona (01:40)


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