Dave Heath: African Sunrise / Manhattan Rave (2000)

The featured composition is 'African Sunrise/Manhattan Rave, concerto for solo percussion & orchestra' and is a work for taped sounds of the streets of New York, various 'found' percussive instruments (barrels, cans, etc) as well as standard timpani and the vast array of orchestral percussion instruments.

A stunning musical collaboration, bringing together the virtuosic talents of Evelyn Glenne, saxophonist John Harle, pianist Philip Smith and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, realising the unique sound worlds created by Dave Heath (David C. Heath). Innovative instrumentation plus atmospheric samples, all combine to create a vivid and emotional musical journey through Africa to New York. Celtic harmonies come into play in the mystical Dawn of a New Age.

"The fruits of Heath's (b. 1956) collaboration with the brilliant Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, recorded here show it to be an inspired and entirely apt one. The composer's ongoing debt to modern jazz remains a constant. Chick Corea and Gary Burton's legendary ECM collaboration Crystal Silence is cited as a major influence on Darkness to Light, different versions of which open and close this CD. The music, particularly in the Manhattan section, is sample heavy and pop-aware, and you will no doubt love or hate it but, either way, the opportunity for virtuosity that it affords Glennie is stunningly realised. Dawn of a New Age represents the more lyrical side of Heath's muse and revisits the Celtic themes; it still finds room for elements drawn from the rave/acid house scene of the early to mid nineties. As if further recommendation were necessary, it features the superb saxophone playing of the ubiquitous John Harle and is, for me, the musical high point of a very interesting if often frenetic disc."