Alice Barron - violin
Rich Phillips - cello
Will Roberts - percussion
George Sleightholme - bass clarinet
www.iyatraquartet.com
13 Apr 2025
John Lyon's Theatre, City Lit, 1-10 Keeley St, London WC2B 4BA
A special album launch concert by the iyatraQuartet to introduce their new spring 2025 album Wild Green. Sung in English, Occitan (medieval French) and Middle English the album is a collection of original compositions that are an enchanting exploration of the beauty and strength in the cycles of the natural world.
Performing together for the last twelve years – violin virtuoso Alice Barron, master clarinetist George Sleightholme, leading cellist Rich Phillips and global fusion percussion maestro, Will Roberts – fuse roots-based, folk and global music on orchestral instruments, with captivating four-part vocals.
It was the rising collective voice of the quartet that encapsulated the ethos of the album and the launch itself, together the voices lifted us to the sky and wrapped around us like Nature's embrace. The music was more than just the new shoots of spring, but a walk through the complete cycle of life.
I read in the album notes that the title track, Wild Green, is inspired by the 12th century German writer Hildegard of Bingen but it was the song named after the trobairitz (female troubadour) Beatritz de Dia that I found truly enchanting. Beatriz is sung brilliantly in Occitan by George Sleightholme, and is where the iyatraquartet seem to excel, with an intoxicating mixture of dark and light strands, perhaps encapsulating the duality of nature and life itself. It is a language that I have started to learn too, and is still alive today, although passed from generation to generation by mouth, rather than taught in schools. The language flourishes in local pockets (I learnt mine in the fields around the small village of Cambieure) and is full of humour, vulgarity and pathos. For anyone wanting to explore a little more beyond this song then get your hands on any vinyl from the Ventadorn label. If vinyl is your thing then snap up your copy of Wild Green at www.iyatraquartet.com/product-page/wild-green-vinyl before it sells out.
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