Colin Riley

Shenanigans Three Movements 1 Purl 5’48 2 Wane 6’34 3 Bob 5’35 Tom Lessels clarinet • Kate Halsall piano • Genevieve Wilkins percussion Lyric Pieces 4 All My Failings Exposed 3’55 5 Right to the End of Our River 5’42 6 A Kind of Green 3’12 7 Close the Door, Put Out the Light 4’06 8 Something In Our Minds Will Always Stay 3’05 9 The Bluegirls Have All Gone Away 6’55 Rebecca Hepplewhite cello • Celine Saout harp Nicola Summerscales alto flute • Samantha Wickramasinghe violin Jessica Beeston viola Shenanigans 10 A Cool Carfuffle 2’29 11 Lazy Legs Lollop 2’45 12 Before and After 2’06 13 Cockaloop 3’05 14 Curly Birds 1’41 15 Swan Song 4’28 Tom Lessels clarinet • Kate Halsall piano 16 As the Tender Twilight Covers 9’08 Matthew Schellhorn piano Colin Riley Total timing: 71’02

© Yolanda Bloor © Yolanda 3 Colin Riley note by Christopher Fox a handful of musical ingredients or harmonic sequence added into into something that is both redolent the compositional mix. of the flavours of other music and Colin Riley is, so his website of the categories’ and the When I asked the composer if yet also distinctly itself. There claims, ‘a composer of no fixed undergraduate programme during he was prepared to share details are further family resemblances indoctrination’. He’s also from the Riley’s time offered bluegrass of these images and moods he between tracks and Riley has generation of composers who grew alongside Mozart, Ockeghem offered a few clues, a snapshot of grouped them into three larger up in an era in which distinctions alongside gamelan: a rich range of his eclectic teenage musical tastes. collections, by turns energetic, between different types of music musical possibilities. The most obvious is probably ‘All were becoming less important. In reflective and playful. All but one Riley arrived in York as a cellist and My Failings Exposed’, which takes Britain in the early 1980s it was OK of the tracks are also quite short – says he left feeling ‘incomplete’. It its title from the second line of the to be a classically trained musician many of them close to the three took him some years to work out third verse of Joy Division’s ‘Love and yet also to like pop and jazz, minutes of the classic pop song – what sort of composer he wanted Will Tear Us Apart’, first released perhaps even to be in a band. If, like and the second collection, Lyric to be, to discover how to draw in 1980. ‘The Bluegirls Have All Riley, you went from the specialist Pieces, six movements from what together so many different musical Gone Away’ is a line from a song music school Chethams to York will eventually be a much larger interests into something that would by Genesis, ‘Ripples’, from their University, then this blurring of the collection of solos, duos, trios, be more than polystylistic soup. 1976 album A Trick of the Tail, and edges of genres was even more quartets and quintets, takes the The music on this album, all of it here Riley also uses a delay pedal possible. The founding professor of pop connection further still, each written between 2005 and 2015, to process the violin sound and the York music department, Wilfrid of them taking a line from a song demonstrates how successfully he generate ‘ripples’. The title ‘Right Mellers, had made it a point of to act as what Riley calls ‘a guiding has achieved this synthesis. Each To The End of Our River’ comes principle to oppose what Morton image or mood’, sometimes with track is sharply focused, distilling from another song from 1980, ‘Hurt Feldman once called ‘a hardening another melodic phrase, bass line

4 5 in Your Heart’ by the great singer- same is true of the other works music; Riley, like many an English something of a departure, a single songwriter John Martyn, and Riley’s recorded here. The first of the composer, can’t resist a pun). movement about twice as long as music here hints too at an earlier Three Movements is underpinned This same combination, of things any other track on this album. After Martyn song, ‘Small Hours’, from by energetic percussion figures, that sound familiar and things the various chamber groupings that 1977. characteristic of the repertoire of that are a bit stranger, extends precede it this is also a work for Piano Circus for whom this music to the six pieces which make up solo performer, the pianist Matthew It’s unlikely that even the keenest was originally written, but the Shenanigans. In a previous age this Schellhorn who commissioned of listeners would be able to trace fundamental impulse is melodic, collection of what used to be called it. The title of the work, and the these musical reminiscences everything spinning out, whether ‘character pieces’ would probably elegiac mood of the music, come without helpful clues from the as anticipation or echo, from the have been entitled ‘Divertimento’, from a poem by the great Indian composer. There’s a hint of a clarinet part. The music may weave but once again Riley’s titles hint poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861- shared melodic contour here, a disparate elements together – at ways of making sense of the 1941): similarity of chord change there, different sorts of musical textures, music: the cool rhythmic unisons of but what’s more important is how As the tender twilight covers in its fold including electronic sounds, a the first piece disturbed by rogue Riley’s choices tell us something of dust-veil marks of hurt and wastage range of stylistic influences – but interjections, the looping repetitions important about his compositional from the dusty day’s prostrations, even each of the three movements has at of the fourth piece evidently instincts. Ask anyone to name so let my great sorrow for thy loss, its heart an unfolding musical line. inspired by some rooster-ish cries their favourite tunes and you will Beloved, spread one perfect golden- in the farmyard. The music may be get a very clear sense of their Riley also skilfully balances tinted silence of its sadness o’er my life. playful but these are games with musical personality. In Riley’s innovation and tradition. Each of rules; in Riley’s own words, ‘I am Let all its jagged fractures and case not only are these songs the Three Movements boasts its attracted to the idea that something distortions, all unmeaning scattered from his teenage years but they share of novel sonorities but the set can appear casual and slightly scraps and wrecks and random ruins, also all share a quintessentially of three falls into a reassuring fast- tongue-in-cheek on the outside, merge in vastness of some evening English focus on melody that slow-fast pattern, each movement but is really quite serious in its stilled with thy remembrance, filled with cuts across the boundaries of characterised by a different type intentions on another level’. endless harmony of pain and peace indie, prog, and folk. These Lyric of motion (although in a parallel united. Pieces live up to their billing: this universe Pearl, Bob, and Wayne The final work, As the Tender is genuinely lyrical music. But the might be the performers playing this Twilight Covers, is, appropriately, © 2017 Christopher Fox 6 7 Colin Riley Colin’s work has been performed ‘Beautiful, clever and direct’ by many of the leading music Classical Music Magazine His recent work includes Warp performers and groups including and Weft, a concerto for two cellos, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, ‘Tantalising new territory’ (for Gabriella Swallow and Guy London Sinfonietta, Smith Quartet, The Times Johnston), Made 2 Resonate, a Piano Circus amongst others. He set of solo multi-sensory pieces has collaborated with diverse artists ‘Has the hairs rising on the with resonating environments, and in the last few years including an Roads Like River Shining Up album with drummer Bill Bruford, back of your neck’ Hill After Rain for cello and choir Skin and Wire and two theatre Birmingham Post marking the centenary of the death projects Nonsense and Centrally of poet Edward Thomas. He has Heated Knickers with the poet ‘Something extraordinarily also created a large-scale song- Michael Rosen. strange and beautiful’ cycle in collaboration with seven BBC Radio 1 He is a Senior Lecturer at Brunel contemporary writers called In Place. University, on the classical executive Colin regularly creates work for his committee at BASCA, and has been ‘Riley is that rarest of birds, own two groups, the Homemade a mentor for the Making Music’s a genuine original’ Orchestra and MooV, where he is Adopt A Composer Scheme London Jazz Blog © Dave Smith © Dave composer and performer/director. since 2001. He runs his own label Colin Riley’s work draws on a Moov’s latest album Here was Squeaky Kate and writes a regular range of elements including new recently described as ‘utterly blog about composing called Riley technologies, improvisation, song- unclassifiable’ (London Jazz Blog), Notes. Information about the writing, and large-scale classical and ‘criminally underexposed’ composers and artists on this www.colinriley.co.uk disc can be found on NMC’s form. His work is difficult to (Jazz UK). website: categorize, embodying a genuine www.nmcrec.co.uk integration of stylistic approaches.

8 9 THANK YOU SUPPORT Three Movements, Lyric Pieces and Shenanigans were recorded DISTRIBUTION between September 2014 and April 2015 at Brunel University London, NMC recordings are distributed worldwide in CD and download formats NMC RECORDINGS the University of Kent and the Yehudi Menuhin School. and on all streaming platforms. For more information visit our website. PRODUCERS’ CIRCLE CHRIS LEWIS Recording Engineer You can also purchase recordings direct from our online store Anonymous, Robert D. Bielecki Foundation, Anthony Bolton, As a registered charity (no. 328052) NMC holds COLIN RILEY Recording Producer www.nmcrec.co.uk Luke Gardiner, Jonathan Goldstein, Nicholas and Judith Goodison, a distinctive position in the recording industry, As The Tender Twilight Covers was recorded on 7 December 2016 at The Menuhin Hall, Yehudi Menuhin School, Surrey Ralph Kanza, George Law, Colin Matthews, Nick Prettejohn, providing public benefi t through the contribution FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE CONTACT: our work makes to enriching cultural life. James and Anne Rushton, Richard Steele, Janis Susskind, DAVID LEFEBER Recording Engineer & Producer NMC Recordings Ltd Somerset House, Third Floor, South Wing, Andrew Ward, Arnold Whittall. 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