TRACK LIST:
1 - 4. SENTENCES
(soprano, live electronics) 1991 (12:39)

5. FIELDS OF ATTRACTION
(string quartet, live electronics) 1997 (14:05)

6 - 10. FIVE SPACES
(electric cello, sound projection) 1999 (16:41)

11. ARENAS
(piano, brass quintet, live electronics) 2003 (27:24)

Simon Emmerson 'Spaces and Places'

Genre: electroacoustic

This CD is part of a 2-CD set released by Sargasso (SCD28060 'Points and Pathways').

Each of these works creates and explores its own special acoustic spaces. In 'Sentences' the singer's varied interaction with her virtual selves creates ever changing spaces; it is as if she carries them with her on her journey like an aura. In 'Fields of Attraction' the aura surrounding the quartet opens out into enormous landscapes that become the stage for the drama played out by the instruments. This contrasts wonderfully with the intimacy of 'Five Spaces', where we seem most of all to be exploring spaces inside the instrument itself. 'Arena's widens the spatial palette further to include the piano as resonator and the colour-resonances of the brass.

Emmerson's invites the listener into his very personal spaces where the acoustic and electroacoustic fuse into one.

Credits:
Sentences: Nicola Walker Smith (soprano), Geoff Smith (live electronics)

Fields of Attraction: Smith Quartet (Ian Humphries, Charles Mutter, Nick Pendlebury, Deirdre Cooper), Simon Emmerson (live electronics)

Five Spaces: Philip Sheppard (five stringed electric cello); Simon Emmerson (sound projection)

Arenas: Philip Mead (piano), Royal Northern College of Music Brass Quintet (Timothy Barber, Gordon Richerby, Stephanie Jones, James Garlick, Gemma Twomlow), James Gourlay (conductor); Simon Emmerson (live electronics)

Original recordings made in the studios at City University, London (Sentences - April 1991; Five Spaces - July 2000; Fields of Attraction - September 2004) and in the Cosmo Rodewald Hall, University of Manchester (Arenas - June 2004, assisted by David Berezan). All tracks mixed and post-produced in the composer's studio and in the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Studio at De Montfort University, Leicester, 2006.

The production of this CD has been assisted by a special award from the Research Development Fund of De Montfort University, Leicester.