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		Jane O'Leary
	1.	Silenzio della Terra (12:07)     Listen: RealAudio or MP3
		Madeleine Staunton, flute
		Richard O'Donnell, percussion
		Hilary Tann
	2.	Of Erthe and Air (14:02)
		Madeleine Staunton, flute, piccolo
		Paul Roe, clarinet, bass clarinet
		Hilary Tann
	3.	The Cresset Stone (10:04)
		Alan Smale, violin
		Jane O'Leary
	4.	Duo for Violin and Cello (11:21)
		Alan Smale, violin
		David James, cello
		Nicola LeFanu
	5.	Trio I (14:29)
		Madeleine Stuanton, flute, piccolo
		David James, cello
		Richard O'Donnell, percussion

Related Links
• Hilary Tann
• The Contemporary Music Centre

 

Reviews

20th Century Music - February 1998 - by Phillip George

"The Celtic Connections of the Irish new-music ensemble, Concorde, are the nationality of both composers and players, and the inclusion (or evocation) of a bodhran in several of the selections. Despite this Irish frame drum, there are fewer connections to Irish folk music, than to mainstream academic modernism.

Jane OLeary's Silenzio della Terra (1993) for flute, marimba, and tom-toms is one such. The composer is the Concordes director, who fashions a rather Sibelian concept of melody-construction-through-fragments. Flutist Madeleine Staunton touches upon Varèses Density 21.5 and Crumbs Vox Balaenae in a music generously supplied with seconds, repeated tones, and modular fragments. Percussionist Richard ODonnell moves from the bodhran-like tom-toms to common-practice marimba tremoli.

A similar world Of Erth and Air (1990) is evoked by Hilary Tann. But here her trio for flute / piccolo, clarinet / bass clarinet (Paul Roe), and percussion (with bona fide bodhran this time) calls forth scaled-down moments from Varèse ensemble music and Crumbs Echoes of Time and the River. Standard swirling modernist lines yield to mournful spare folkish passages. The solemnity continues in the composers The Cresset Stone (1993), a meditation on stone and light which begins and ends in stillness. The inner sections contain references to the final Kyrie of an eleventh-century Gregorian chant.

O'Learys Duo for Violin and Cello (1994) adds Hungarian (Bartók) connections to the mix, while Nicola LeFanus Trio I (1980 for flute piccolo, cello, and percussion) touches yet-again Varèse (Octandre), as well as East Asia. Cellist David James seizes the moment, along with the rest of the fine ensemble."