Thursday 13 January 2022

Personal Stories: Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian's Welcome Party on NMIC

Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian Welcome Party; Ziazan, Trish Clowes, Tim Giles, London Symphony Orchestra, Jon Hargreaves, Ausias Garrigos Morant, Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, Gareth Wilson; NMIC
Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian Welcome Party; Ziazan, Trish Clowes, Tim Giles, London Symphony Orchestra, Jon Hargreaves, Ausias Garrigos Morant, Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, Gareth Wilson; NMIC

Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 11 January 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Telling a series of interconnected stories, Horrocks-Hopayian's music delights in crossing boundaries; it intrigues and delights.


The music on composer Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian's Welcome Party, her portrait disc on NMIC, tells a series of interconnecting stories. There are thirteen tracks performed by Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian (voice), Ziazan (voice), Trish Clowes (saxophone), Tim Giles (drums), London Symphony Orchestra, Jon Hargreaves (conductor), Ausias Garrigos Morant (clarinets), Choir of Girton College, Cambridge and Gareth Wilson (conductor).

The stories range from Horrocks-Hopayian's Armenian heritage, her life as a composer and a performer, her links to members of her family, her participation in the London Symphony Orchestra's Panufnik Composers Scheme and her LSO Soundhub residency at 575 Wandsworth Road, the former home of Khadambi Asalache (1935-2006) with its interior decorated with a profusion of Asalache's fretwork, with Horrocks-Hopayian using Asalache's carvings, paintings and his own stories as inspiration.

We begin with Muted Lines which was written for saxophonist Trish Clowes and where Horrocks-Hopayian's own smoky voice interacts in a bluesy manner with Clowes' saxophone, until the music goes up-tempo with a terrific saxophone solo. Then comes the title track, Welcome Party which is dedicated to Susie Thomson (Khadambi Asalache's partner) and Horrocks-Hopayian's family. It is an extrovert orchestral piece which seems to be channelling Percy Grainger at his most up-beat and inventive.

The Cave Painter takes as its inspiration one of Asalache's poems. First Horrocks-Hopayian reads the poem and then we hear the work, for violin, viola and bass clarinet, sustained, evocative and thoughtful with the solo violin to the fore. Text is also the inspiration for Swallows and Nightingales but here it is fragments of Armenian author Gevork Dodokhian and Saphho. Performed by Ziazan and a string quintet, the result is an evocation of birdsong with an elaborate dialogue between voice and strings.

The Ladies returns to 575 Wandsworth Road, specifically the bathroom where Asalache's paintings include images of an eclectic mix of women from Bessie Smith to Cleopatra to Madame Pompadour. It combines an exciting orchestral contribution with Ziazan's bluesy voice including some extensive scat singing. Aslache's carved images inspired Dancing Birds, though here the music is sustained and thoughtful with sliding lines in the strings giving the whole a very aerial feel.

Another text by Asalache's follows, and Horrocks-Hopayian's Inkwells uses a graphic score inspired by the text. The physical look of Horrocks-Hopayian's scores is important to her, so that Muted Lines uses a text written as eye-music, whilst both Inkwells and Ways and Ways have cutouts in the score, mirroring Asalache's fretwork. Inkwells uses found sounds, from 575 Wandsworth Road, so we begin with recorded hammering which develops into intriguingly complex poly-rhythms over which Ziazan's voice floats almost as an invocation.

2015 marked the centenary of the Armenian genocide, and Horrocks-Hopayian's Ser is one of her responses, a choral setting of a single work, 'Ser' which is the Armenian word for love. Performed by the choir of Girton College, it is a considered work full of fascinating harmony.

Walls and Ways returns us to found sounds, this time the tick of the grandfather clock in 575 Wandsworth Road and the sound of birdsong. Over this, the clarinet combines with Asalache's intriguing story, Parting of Ways, read by Ziazan to create a sense both of place and of timelessness.

The choir of Girton College return with Lullaby Between Two, a work that uses the same material as Welcome Party but in intriguingly different ways, and the piece is a tribute to an aunt who died during the pandemic.

There is an engaging approachability to Horrocks-Hopayian and, along with a delight in telling stories there is a clear sense of her love of crossing stylistic boundaries. The results are intriguing and often seductive.

Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian Welcome Party
Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian (voice)
Ziazan (voice)
Trish Clowes (saxophone)
Tim Giles (drums)
London Symphony Orchestra, Jon Hargreaves (conductor)
Ausias Garrigos Morant (clarinets)
Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, Gareth Wilson (conductor)
Recorded at All Saints, Tooting, 19-20 July 2021, St Georges' Chesterton, Cambridge, 28 June 2021
NMIC D268 1CD [57:48]








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