Into the Light

Vista Musicale

Into the Light
Performed By Vista Musicale
Album UPC 888174663210
CD Baby Track ID TR0000344291
Label Vista Musicale
Released 2013-09-01
BPM 136
Rated 0
ISRC GBRT51200212
Year 2013
Spotify Plays 0
Writers
Writer Colin Upton
Pub Co Colin Upton
Composer Colin Upton
ClearanceFacebook Sync License,Traditional Sync,YouTube Sync ServiceOne Stop
Rights Controlled Master and Publishing Grant
Rights One-Stop: Master + 100% Pub Grant
Original/Cover/Public Domain original
Country United Kingdom

Description

A sumptuous new album of romantic classical music – orchestral, instrumental, vocal and choral – accompanied by the John Wilson Orchestra.

Notes

A HISTORY OF THE ALBUM
Work on the album commenced in the summer of 2005 when Andrew Cottee produced his superb orchestrations of Charles Mauleverer and Colin Upton’s music. The next stage of the long journey was a visit to the legendary Studio 2 at Abbey Road to record the John Wilson Orchestra over the August Bank Holiday of that year. The Vista Musicale singers and instrumentalists were painstakingly overdubbed in subsequent years at various studios and venues – including a return visit to Abbey Road to record Craig Ogden, whose brilliant guitar playing illuminates several tracks. By 2008 we were in a position to start work on the mixing and editing of the vast amount of recorded material at our disposal. This process continued through to the spring of 2012 when the artwork was put in place, and final preparations and arrangements for the launch were set in motion. The album presents the John Wilson Orchestra predominantly in a supporting role, and in a different musical style, but the quality of the playing is unmistakable. We are delighted now in 2014 that the music is finally available for you to enjoy.


THE COMPOSERS
Born in Jersey in 1983, Charles Mauleverer, won a choral scholarship to The Pilgrims School in Winchester, and subsequently a music exhibition to Winchester College, where he won the Kirby Prize for composition. He then read music at Oxford University – under Roger Allen at St Peter’s College – again as a choral scholar. After some years travelling, working in and exploring film and music, Charles won a scholarship to study for a Masters in composition for screen at the Royal College of Music in London, under Joseph Horovitz and Alison Kay, and including orchestration with Ken Hesketh as a Clifton Park scholar and Hilda Simmonds Award holder. For updates and further samples of Charles Mauleverer’s music, please visit www.charlesmauleverer.com

Colin Upton first acquired a passion for composition as a choirboy at the Royal School of Church Music, and as a member of the Trinity Choristers, with whom he gained invaluable broadcasting experience through the BBC. He went on to become a teacher at Winchester College – a school with a rich musical tradition – and started to compose for some of the school’s most outstanding musicians, past and present. Ten years ago Colin, brother David, and Charles Mauleverer formed Vista Musicale with a view to recording the results of their labours. The John Wilson Orchestra, hired to provide the accompaniment, were first in the studio with a visit to Abbey Road in 2005.


JOHN WILSON: CONDUCTOR
John Wilson has developed close, long-term relationships with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Philharmonia, CBSO, and the BBC orchestras with appointments as Principal Conductor of the Northern Sinfonia and Principal Guest Conductor of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in Dublin.

But it is his performances with his own John Wilson Orchestra that have introduced him to the widest audiences. Celebrated for his immensely popular annual appearances at the BBC Proms, his 2009 Prom celebrating 75 years of MGM musicals took him from being a highly respected conductor across an unusually broad spectrum of music to an overnight sensation. Televised live on BBC2 and watched by 3.5 million viewers, it generated so much public demand that it was repeated three times, released on DVD and led directly to an exclusive recording contract with his eponymous orchestra on EMI. He and his handpicked collection of leading players from orchestras across the UK, founded in 1994, returned to the Proms in 2010 with a salute to the film musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein. In 2011 he conducted further highlights of the Hollywood Golden Age and, in 2012, the complete score of ‘My Fair Lady’ plus a further televised concert of music from Broadway. His dedication to this repertoire is evidenced by his painstaking, bar-by-bar reconstruction of “lost” orchestral scores of MGM musicals.

Refusing to draw distinctions between the composers whose work he favours – “it’s all music and we have to play ‘The Band Wagon’ with as much care, attention and style as we do a Mahler symphony” – he has maintained a life-long love of British music. Across a range of orchestras he is currently conducting all nine symphonies of Vaughan Williams, whose ‘The Lark Ascending’ is included on his recently released disc ‘Made in Britain’ with the RLPO which also features music by Walton, Bax, Butterworth, Delius and Edward German. He has recorded both of German’s symphonies on the Dutton label where he has also recorded English music by Eric Coates, Anthony Collins, Robert Farnon and beyond with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and music by John Ireland with the Hallé on its own label and the RLPO on Naxos. His disc of Elgar’s wartime music on SOMM was released in November and was chosen as Editor’s Choice in ‘Gramophone Magazine’.

Born in Gateshead on Tyneside, he studied composition and conducting at the Royal College of Music where his teachers were Joseph Horovitz and Neil Thomson. He won all the major conducting prizes and the coveted Tagore Gold Medal for the most outstanding student, and has recently been made a Fellow.


ANDREW COTTEE: ORCHESTRATOR
Andrew Cottee is one of the busiest and most respected arrangers in the UK. Recent projects include orchestrating the score to Paul McCartney's ballet ‘Ocean's Kingdom’, now released on Decca, and writing arrangements for Curtis Stigers to be performed with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Orchestras he has arranged for include the BBC Concert, Hallé, Royal Scottish National and RTÉ Symphony and Concert Orchestras. ‘The John Lennon Songbook’, premiered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, has since been performed many times in the UK and worldwide, and a suite from the film ‘Genevieve’ for harmonica and orchestra was premiered at the BBC Proms. Andrew's overture ‘Hooray for Hollywood’ opened the John Wilson Orchestra's 2011 BBC Prom.

Andrew has written arrangements for Claire Martin, Lance Ellington and Gary Williams, for Alison Balsom and the Irish Chamber Orchestra, and for Imelda May. He provided orchestral backing for Tommy Fleming's album ‘Going Back’ and has written medleys of film and TV music for the percussion ensemble O Duo. In 2005 he was an adjudicator in the BBC Concert Orchestra's ‘Art of the Arranger’ competition. His work for TV and film also includes orchestrating Howard Goodall's music for ‘Mr. Bean: The Animated Series’, an arrangement for Kevin Spacey featured on ITV, and many of the scores for the John Wilson Orchestra's ‘Swingin' Christmas’ on BBC. He also contributed orchestrations and transcriptions to Kevin Spacey's film ‘Beyond the Sea’.

For further details and more samples of Andrew’s work, please visit www.andrewcottee.com

HEAVENLY VOICES
Our regular (Vista Musicale) singers were drawn from the distinguished ranks of Winchester College Chapel Choir – from which no fewer than three BBC Young Choristers of the Year emerged in quick succession. Our guest singers are members of contemporary vocal ensemble EXAUDI, and appear on the album through the generous cooperation of Director James Weeks.

DAVID UPTON: RECORDING DIRECTOR
Given his choral and computing background, David was ideally placed to set up and run our recording studio. He has undertaken a vast amount of work – setting up recording sessions, overdubbing singers and solo instrumentalists, editing and mixing – and the quality of the sound we’ve achieved is largely down to him.

JACK WADDINGTON: ARTIST
Jack was specially commissioned to produce a front cover painting that reflects the lyrics of the title track. The setting is the Old Winchester Hill Nature Reserve in Hampshire’s South Downs National Park. Jack is an exceptionally talented and versatile young artist, who is currently studying at the University of the Arts in London.

MALCOLM HEBRON: LYRICIST
Malcolm teaches English and Art History at Winchester College. Outside the classroom he is often in the theatre, writing sketches and masterminding triumphs such as ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’. On the road with the school’s community entertainers, his individual piano and guitar accompaniment style has often been the subject of comment in care homes in the central Hampshire area.

JOHN RUTTER REVIEW
Life, when we look back on it, is a series of intense moments we can recall but never recapture; put another way, it is like watching a film with no rewind button. Music, though, has the power to bring back the feeling of a special moment and our bitter-sweet regret that it has gone, which is one reason we turn to it . . .

Such were this reviewer’s musings on listening to the album ‘Far Above a Midnight Sky’ by Vista Musicale, a group of dedicated singers and instrumentalists whose mission is clearly to reconnect us with our more tender, private feelings. The album is the work of composers Colin Upton and Charles Mauleverer – their language the type of music which beguiles and haunts us with sweet melody rather than arouses us with the shock of the new or bludgeons us with the abrasive. There are eighteen tracks, some vocal or choral, some orchestral, some instrumental, all with evocative titles such as ‘Through the Mists of Time’ and ‘Blue Remembered Hills’, and the mood is predominantly gentle and wistful, tinged with nostalgia.

I love it all, and the John Wilson Orchestra is on hand to underscore the soloists or swell to an emotional climax when needed. The performances are lovely, with Harry Sever’s pure treble, Adrian Brendel’s eloquent cello, and Andrew Cottee’s lush orchestral arrangements as highlights, so . . . start the CD, surrender, let your eyes mist over when no one is looking, but maybe, with such a gorgeous box of musical chocolates on your CD player, savour a few tracks at a time rather than gobble it all at once.

THE LYRICS

Unspoken
(lyrics by Malcolm Hebron and Colin Upton)

Dream clouds drifting, silently seeping
Through a window blurred with fears
Now it’s all so hard to remember
The words the passing of the years

Autumn colours fade so slowly
Far beneath a restless sky
And when my face is only a stranger’s
How then to say goodbye?

Dream lies broken, the words unspoken,

The dawn mist rising, far horizons
The light all surpassing, dreams everlasting
Lux aeterna, requiem

The Swing
(lyrics by Charles Mauleverer)

Once upon a time in a land far, far away
Two on a swing in the spring gently sway
Secret paradise in hidden sunlit bay
Swing to the scene of Nature’s play

Swing, swing, your beauteous flowing way
Swing, swing, and whisper all you may
Sing, sing, for love is wandering

Quiet shaded earth, story none can tell
Stored in eternity’s gardens to dwell
Flowing springs of youth
Your harmful thoughts dispel
Safe in forever knowing all, all
That all shall be well

Just a Stranger
(lyrics by Malcolm Hebron)

When the world falls silent
Birds no longer fly
When your way is lost in the forest
The streams have all run dry
When trees are trembling and cold
And it’s far too late to try
When my face is just a stranger’s
How then to say goodbye?

Now our prints have vanished
From the dusty lanes
And yet in hills and valleys
Something still remains
One day I’ll tell you stories
Things to make you fly
On the wings of peace and love
Through bright untroubled skies

Far Above a Midnight Sky
(lyrics by Malcolm Hebron, Colin and David Upton)

Far above a midnight sky
Veil of light, a distant cry
Silence drifting, sleeping valleys lie
Turn towards the dawn and spread your wings and fly

Turn and lift your wings and fly!

Dawn’s bright banner soon unfurled
Spreading warmth across the world
Fears and sorrow vanish with the night
Golden lands stretch out before you
In the morning light!

Far above a midnight sky
In peace, in light once more to fly

Into the Light
(lyrics by Colin Upton)

Lost and lonely, silently weeping
In a world that none can share
Through the night of pain and sorrow
Lifting darkness and despair

Through the night of pain, doubt and sorrow
Soaring into the light

In Fields Where Roses Fade
(lyrics adapted by John Robb from the Latin
Hymn, the ‘Stabat Mater’)

Tristis et afflicta
Fuit illa benedicta
Mater unigeniti!

Eia mater, fons amoris
Me sentire vim doloris
Fac ut tecum lugeam
Fac ut animae donetur
Paradisi, gloria

The Miner
(lyrics by Charles Mauleverer)

Stay, stay here a while by my side
Tell me a story sweet where I may hide
Yet, yet never leave me alone
Lest one more legacy be struck in stone

In stone I pave my way
To dust I must some day
Soon, soon, too soon

Deep, deep in a mountain I mine
Sulphurous prison ‘til the end of time
Near, nearer to heaven am I floating now
But seven will I never know

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