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HEAVEN TO EARTH
Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, composer
London Voices
Ben Parry, conductor
Andreana Chan, organist

This is simply beautiful choral writing by someone who knows, from a singer’s perspective, how to compose music which every choir will want to sing.
John Rutter CBE

Heaven to Earth is a collection of singable, accessible, sacred choral music by the best-selling choral composer and multi-faceted musician Joanna Forbes L’Estrange.

The album comprises introits, anthems, canticles, a set of Preces and Responses, and a congregational mass setting, and the 17 pieces display a range of styles, from traditional, church choral music to gospel- and jazz-influenced. Each piece sits comfortably within the SATB vocal ranges, the organ accompaniments are designed to support the choir, there is minimal division within the parts, and the harmonies are attractive and approachable. The texts are drawn from the Bible, the Psalms, The Book of Common Prayer, Holy Communion, writers including St Richard of Chichester, Phineas Fletcher, Jane Austen, and the composer herself, and all of the pieces are suitable for church services: Eucharist, Choral Evensong, weddings and funerals. The settings are written with the intention of enhancing the meaning of the words, both for those who sing them and for those who hear them.

I caught up with Joanna to find out more about her influences and inspirations in creating this album:

Your new album is called Heaven to Earth. Why this title and how does the music on the album reflect the title?

Anyone who’s ever sat in a beautiful church or cathedral in witnessed the evening sunlight streaming in through a stained glass window will know the sensation of a hint of Heaven coming to Earth. When my sons were choristers in the Choir of St John’s College in Cambridge, I would go to evensong as many times a week as I could just to experience that extraordinary, other-worldly atmosphere. It was like a wonderful reset and I would emerge, less than an hour later, feeling completely different from how I felt walking in. By listening to or singing church choral music, we can sometimes get that feeling of recreating the songs of the angelic hosts in Heaven down here on Earth.

The title for this album came to me during one such service. I remember reciting The Lord’s Prayer along with the rest of the congregation and, during the line ‘Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven’, being struck by the notion of praying for things on Earth to be as they are in Heaven. In our busy lives, we can easily be caught up in the endless day-to-day tasks and minutiae of life and the constant news of conflicts, famine and natural disasters. Evensong services allow us respite from this busyness and to be at one with God, whatever we each perceive God to be, with each other and with ourselves; when the music moves you, it can feel as if Heaven has come to Earth. We’re so fortunate that, wherever in the country you find yourself you can pretty much guarantee that there will be a choral evensong happening not too far away.

Almost every piece on this album mentions or alludes to Heaven and Earth. There are those which create strong visual imagery such as in Let My Prayer Rise Up (track 1), where our Earthly prayers rise like incense to Heaven, and High As The Heavens (track 13) which likens the greatness of God’s love to the expanse between Heaven and Earth. Then there are the pieces which remind us that God’s glory can be found on Earth and not just in Heaven, such as For The Beauty Of The Earth (track 10) – ‘For each perfect gift of Thine, to our Earth so freely given, Graces human and divine, Flowers of Earth and buds of Heaven’ – and in my setting of Jane Austen’s prayer Give Us Grace (track 8) in which she writes ‘thou art everywhere present’. Similarly, the words of Holy, Holy, Holy (track 16) includes the line ‘Heaven and Earth are full of your glory’. Elsewhere on the album, there are reminders that Jesus came from Heaven to Earth, such as in the Magnificat (track 3), Mary’s response to the news that she will be the mother of God, and in Drop, Drop, Slow Tears (track 12) which speaks of Mary Magdalene’s tears bathing the ‘beauteous feet which brought from Heaven the news and Prince of Peace’. In Words From The Cross (track 7) we see Jesus communing from the cross on Earth to his Father in Heaven. Finally, there are the pieces such as The Lord’s Prayer (track 18), The Chorister’s Prayer (tracks 5 and 11) and the Preces and Responses (track 6) which long for Heaven’s blessings to be bestowed on us here on Earth, for example this line from one of the Collects in track 6: ‘mercifully grant that, as thy Holy angels alway do thee service in Heaven, so by thy appointment they may succour and defend us here on Earth’.

You have dedicated the album to your foster father, Rev. Richard Abbott. Tell us more about his influence on your musical life and career.

It’s impossible to overstate Richard’s influence on my musical life and my career. Interviewers sometimes assume that, since I’m the daughter and the granddaughter of professional composers and arrangers, this must have been the reason I became a composer myself. In actual fact, it was my foster father, who brought me up from the age of 4 to 11, who encouraged me to start writing music. He and my sister and I had sung together in our local parish church choir; a humble little choir with just one rehearsal and one service a week, but it got me hooked on church choral music. When Richard became ordained in 2007, he asked me to write a piece for the choir to sing as his ordination. I’d been a professional singer for over ten years by that point and, although I’d written a handful of arrangements in my capacity as Musical Director of The Swingle Singers, I hadn’t composed anything original since my GCSE Music coursework! I remember saying to Richard “but I’m not a composer” and him replying “well, I think you might be.” It was a turning point for me; I wrote a setting of Go Forth In Peace (track 21) which the Royal School of Church Music published. Choirs started singing it and sending me nice messages via my website. Not long after that, I was commissioned to write a congregational setting of the mass (The St Helen’s Service tracks 14-17) which again the RSCM published and which many choirs have since adopted as their weekly setting. I find that my experiences as a chorister, as a choir director and as a life-long church-goer all influence me as a composer. I definitely write music from the perspective of a singer more than of a composer, if that makes sense. It’s got to feel nice to sing.

After I left the foster home, Richard and I remained in touch. Once I’d started composing, he would begin every phone conversation in the following way: “Hello darling, how are you and what are you writing at the moment?” He commissioned Saint Richard’s Prayer (track 19) too and cried when I showed him the dedication at the top of the published music. We all need someone like him in our lives to believe in us and to encourage us to believe in ourselves. I was so lucky that Social Services happened to place my sister and me with Richard and his wife Gillian. Perhaps it wasn’t luck at all but part of a bigger plan. In any case, he was my guardian angel just when I needed one most. When Richard died of cancer in October 2022, I knew I wanted to record an album in his memory. I only wish he could have heard the wonderful London Voices singing my music; he’d have been over the moon.

What do you hope listeners will take from the music on your album?

More than anything, it is my hope that people who hear my album will want to sing the pieces themselves. I’m excited about choir directors listening to a track and thinking “Ooh, that would work well with my choir. I’m going to get hold of the sheet music!” The tracks comprise a mix of introits, anthems, Preces and Responses, Canticles, prayer settings, a Mass setting – some are for SATB choir, with or without organ, some have a unison lower line, some are for upper voices – but what all the pieces have in common is that they are singable. Can you tell how hard I’m trying not to use the word accessible?! I find it can have negative and possibly even patronising overtones. What I mean is that I want people to listen to these tracks and have confidence that, however little experience or musical training they may have, they will be able to sing my music. What’s more, they will hopefully find it enjoyable and pleasurable to sing. My husband and I record all of our compositions: I sing the soprano and alto lines and Alexander sings the tenor and bass. There are two reasons for doing this. It’s by recording every line of a piece that you find out how it feels to sing, whether you’ve got the breath markings, note-lengths, dynamics correct and so on. I always make adjustments as a result of this process. The other advantage is that we can create part-learning tracks which we then make available to choirs who find it beneficial to hear their vocal line sung before they learn it.

When I’m composing music intended for use in church services, my overriding motivation is to set the words in such a way that those who hear them are drawn closer to them. Church choral music doesn’t need to be challenging or ground-breaking, in my opinion. There is such beauty to be found in simplicity, something I learned by singing the music of the Taizé community in France; through musical repetition and familiarity, the words come to the fore and the whole experience becomes almost meditative. The same is true of the familiar Gregorian chants of the Medieval music. I like to write music which every choir can sing, not just the professionals. When I found out that over 600 choirs across the world had sung my coronation anthem The Mountains Shall Bring Peace (track 20) it made me so happy.

Singing in a choir is so completely life-affirming. We are so fortunate to have such a rich heritage of church buildings and church music but, sadly, not all churches and their choirs are thriving. The Royal School of Church Music and other organisations such as the Friends of Cathedral Music are doing wonderful work to keep this heritage alive and I want to do my bit to help. People are sometimes put off joining a choir because they think they’re not good enough or don’t have the right background or musical training but my belief is that if everyone sang in a choir, the world would be a better place. And if I can encourage people to do this by composing tuneful pieces which everyone can enjoy singing, I will.

Heaven to Earth is released on 12 January 2024 on the Signum Classics label on CD and via all major streaming platforms. Links to the sheet music and digital downloads for all of the pieces on Heaven To Earth can be found at www.joannaforbeslestrange.com/heaven-to-earth-sheet-music

This music is simply heavenly, and no choir, church or performance venue should miss out on the blessing this music brings. Through beautifully crafted accessible melodies, glorious harmonies, and a real ability to convey the sense of meaning of the text, this richly varied repertoire goes straight to the heart.
Ken Burton, conductor, composer, arranger & performer

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ENTRANCED The Orchestra of the Swan Signum Classics SIGCD853 Musical adventurers, Orchestra of the Swan (OOTS), led by the charismatic violinist David Le Page, complete a remarkable musical journey with their latest release, Entranced. It’s an extraordinary odyssey which has seen them topping the US Billboard and iTop charts, and launching millions of streams from new audiences. Their innovative, imaginative approach cleverly combines “traditional” classical music with rock, pop, jazz, techno, ambient and folk to produce eclectic programmes and performances which blur the lines between genres. This enlightened approach to repertoire, combined with the Swan’s concerts in non-standard venues and experiments in digital sound, appeals to listeners with less exposure to classical music. Over the past few years, OOTS have released a series of “mixtape” albums, which continue the spirit of the mixtapes and compilations on cassette tape of the 1980s (something which those of us of a certain age will remember creating for friends and boyfriends/girlfriends). These inventive, carefully curated and beautifully executed albums present a diverse compilation of arrangements (many of which are by David Le Page) and reinterpretations of works by an eclectic mix of composers.
Entranced is a compilation of these compilations, as it were, incorporating 15 tracks from OOTS’ critically acclaimed trio of mixtape albums, Timelapse, Labyrinths and Echoes, with all tracks now produced in Dolby Atmos – the immersive, surround-sound technology developed by cinema, that places the audience at the heart of the sound. Artistic Director of OOTS, David Le Page says, “Entranced weaves together the genius of David Bowie, Schubert, Delius, Philip Glass, and Piazzolla. There is a brand new arrangement of Finzi’s extraordinary The Salutation for solo violin and strings, and transcendent beauty, from Brian Eno’s gorgeous An Ending (Ascent), to Peter Maxwell Davies’ Farewell to Stromness.”
Listening in not-quite-darkness, with only the dim light from my bedside clock radio, I hear An Ending (Ascent) by that master of ambient, Brian Eno. Of course I recognise it, but not quite in this arrangement. The sounds wash gently over me and in the dark and still of the night, it’s intimate and meditative, almost a lullaby. Listening again, in daytime, in the surround sound of my kitchen HiFi, the music floats, weightless but for a simple sequence picked out on the harp, now growing in intensity with a soaring violin line over lusher instrumental textures….
This track embodies the spirit of Entranced. The music on this album is serene and introspective, mesmerising and immersive – from the opening track, an arrangement of David’s Bowie’s song Heroes to the gracefulness of Rameau’s Les Boréades, the haunting sensuality of Piazzolla’s Oblivion, and the hypnotic, minimalist loops of Philip Glass, Entranced presents a sequence of beautifully atmospheric musical landscapes, infused with light, which transport the listener to the far reaches of their imagination. Entranced is released on 20 October by Signum Classics, on disc and via streaming
Orchestra of the Swan
David Le Page

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‘Echoes’ is the latest in Orchestra of the Swan’s ‘mixtape’ series, following on from ‘Timelapse’ and ‘Labyrinths’ (which has received over 8 million audio streams since 2021 and was shortlisted for  Gramophone award in the Spatial Audio category).

As with their previous mixtape albums, ‘Echoes’ is an eclectic mix of music encompassing a variety of genres from Baroque to pop. The album features 14 tracks of arrangements of song by Frank Zappa, Adrian Utley (Portishead) and The Velvet Underground together with works by J S Bach, Delius, Max Richter, Philip Glass and Gerald Finzi.

David Le Page, violinist and Artistic Director of OOS, and arranger of many of the tracks, says of the album, “Although you can listen to each track in isolation Echoes is, first and foremost, a complete journey; the way a work ends and another begins is designed to create a frisson, a jolt of recognition or a feeling of surprise and satisfaction. Echoes explores landscape, light, water, dreams, birth and the slowly changing rhythm of the seasons; it also represents a callback to the days of vinyl when the act of listening to recordings was necessarily more involved and required all of your attention…. Despite the ongoing march of music technology and the death of various beloved formats the mixtape has somehow survived and adapted. It is unaccountably more popular than it has ever been.”

Echoes is a captivating and beautifully orchestrated collection of music that seamlessly blends old and new, the familiar and the lesser-known. It opens with a shimmering, luminous and utterly transporting performance of the Bach/Siloti Prelude in B minor, arranged for violin and orchestra by David Le Page. From the silken lines of Bach/Siloti we move into the joyousness of Max Richter’s “recomposed” Spring II from The Four Seasons and thence to the urgent energy of Buffalo Jump by Philip Sheppard. This is followed by the psychedelic, zany Peaches En Regalia by Frank Zappa in an arrangement redolent of the late 60s sound of the original with imaginative scoring for brass and Hammond organ.

After the high jinks of Zappa, a calmer interlude follows with Falla’s Nana, featuring Sally Harrop on clarinet who brings a haunting poignancy to the melody. The Sea of Time and Space by David Le Page is a an uplifting track inspired by the middle movement of Vivaldi’s L’inverno, the Romance from Britten’s Frank Bridge Variations and the second movement of Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for string orchestra, which takes its title from a painting by William Blake. A gentle bossa nova bass and pizzicato notes provide the backdrop over which two violins gracefully, sensuously glide in a silken soundworld. This segues perfectly into The Art of Dancing. V: Trance by Toby Young, a modern homage to the baroque dance suite where each movement hints at a different style of electro dance music. Trance is a nocturne, in part inspired by the stillness of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and the hypnotic ambiance of electronic dance music, all beautifully expressed by the muted trumpet solo played by Simon Debruslais.

Venus in Furs, an iconic, unsettling track by the Velvet Underground, is reworked by David Le Page. It retains the angular, ‘shrieking’ viola of the original, but Le Page’s austerely beautiful violin, replacing Lou Reed’s vocals, lends an unexpected tenderness to this track.

Glory Box, by British indie group Portishead, here arranged for voice and orchestra, is the highlight of the album for me. Strings slink and slide with Clara Sanabras’ potent, expressive and bluesy vocals. It’s very close to the original version – it retains that haunting string sample – but is magically reimagined by Le Page.

After the taut fragility of Glory Box, We played some open chords and rejoiced (A Winged Victory for the Sullen) provides another calming interlude: here, a simple chordal piano motif, played by Viv McLean, and shimmering strings and guitar create a beautiful soundscape, understated in its emotion yet replete with expression.

Starbust is a vibrant, colourful contrast, while Aquarelle 1 by Delius, arranged by Eric Fenby, is another demonstration of the warmth and elegance of the Orchestra of the Swan’s string section. A spacious tempo allows the listener to really appreciate Delius’ magical harmonies. Similarly, in Mishima – Closing from String Quartet No 3 by Philip Glass (arr. by David Le Page), the richness of OOTS’ strings piquantly highlights the shifting harmonies and textures of Glass’ music in a movement of shifting emotions and timelessness.

To close, The Salutation from Finzi’s Dies natalis, perhaps the most obviously “classical” piece on the album, and a quintessentially English piece too, its vocal line elegantly sung by Mark Le Brocq who really captures the poignancy of this music, written on the eve of the Second World War.

In ‘Echoes’, Orchestra of the Swan has once again delivered a genre-busting album that contains brilliant, unexpected juxtapositions and imaginative orchestrations. Like their previous mixtape albums, it’s ambitious, ingenious and unorthodox. The result is a stylish, sensitively curated album that is an enchanting, often intriguing and always engaging listening experience.

ECHOES is released on the Signum label and is also available via streaming

 

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Guest post by David Gordon

I am a jazz pianist, harpsichordist, composer, as well as arranger, improviser and educator. I enjoy improvising with and arranging for musicians in the classical world – putting improvisation to work, you might say. I have collaborated extensively, including with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, the London Chamber Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, London Concertante, and now the Orchestra of the Swan, whose leader and artistic director is violinist/composer David Le Page – known almost universally as DLP.

DLP and I have worked extensively and creatively on a variety of projects, and he seems to have a unique understanding of what I, as an improviser, can bring to a largely classical performance situation. So for example I’ve been delighted to engage in the underrated (and sometimes sniffed-at) art of ‘piano continuo’, perfectly suited to, for example, the melodrama of Tartini’s ‘Devil’s Trill’ sonata, which we recorded, thrillingly, in a filmed concert with the addition of a dancer; and, more in a soloistic capacity, the orchestra’s hugely successful ‘Sleep’ project, which grew out of my propensity to improvise elaborately on the second movement of Vivaldi’s Autumn. DLP’s brilliance as project creator and programme designer has also encouraged me extend my range as arranger and improviser – for example, a concert entitled ‘Mozart in Cuba’, which includes music from both these sources in roughly equal measure, inspired me to write a mash-up arrangement, and also to improvise cadenzas to the A major piano concerto K. 414 in Cuban style. We know Mozart was such a joker that I didn’t need to pause to think whether the composer would have approved.

Arranging is also an underrated art, often seen as something rather commercial, despite the fact that is inextricably linked with the more highly esteemed art of composition. Composers have always arranged: see for example Mozart’s version of Handel’s Messiah, which he subtly brought up to date with the addition of clarinets, horns, trombones and more. For me, the most successful arrangements – not unlike the best interpretations – manage to understand, or at least convincingly speculate about, what might be behind the composition. To give two examples: in my concerto Romanesque, originally for recorder, which was inspired by the abbey church of Moissac in southwestern France, the unsurpassed beauty of the sculpture in the porch doorway of Jeremiah inspired the movement entitled ‘Lamentation’, which I based on a lament by Buxtehude, recast in a different rhythm (a version of this movement for violin on Orchestra of the Swan’s recording ‘Labyrinths’ with DLP as soloist, is out in November on the Signum Classics label). The other, oddly, is that when I’ve approached works of J.S. Bach, the unintentional result is often in an American country style! This has made more sense to me since I learned that American folk music was partly derived from émigré musicians from places such as Germany and Moravia – and in fact one of Bach’s (presumably musical) grandchildren ended up in the States. Things begin to look less far-fetched in this light.

One of the things I love about working with DLP is the way he encourages me to make things up, even when we’re playing classics of the violin and piano repertoire. Perhaps that’s because he knows if I try to play the correct notes it won’t be very good! But I hope it’s because the energy that’s transmitted from that approach can bring freedom to the whole performance. I once worked with a choral director who picked me up on playing a 6/5 chord instead of a 6 chord in the Purcell choral work we were rehearsing. That’s unlikely to be a creative working environment. And a reminder that, while the masterpieces of ‘classical’ music are amongst the greatest achievements of humankind, we cannot afford to forget our sense of ‘play’. It is after all, the word we use to say what we’re going to do when we do music.

I’d like to share with you a piece that encapsulates many of the aspects of music I’ve mentioned: baroque, jazz, arrangement, even collaboration – in this case with the composer. François Couperin’s Les Barricades Mistérieuses is one of the most beguiling and delightful pieces of music for solo harpsichord. One day the idea of reharmonising it came to me, and the result is Mysterious Barracudas – which works equally well on the harpsichord or piano. You can hear a performance here with the extraordinary baroque/jazz crossover group Respectable Groove

– or better still, your own one: I’ve tried to make the score as ‘definitive’ as I can, even if it comes out with some different notes each time I play it.

David Gordon is an improviser, composer and keyboard player. Find out more at his website.

His new arrangement of Buxtehude’s Lamentation (Cantata Klaglied BuxWV76) is included on ‘Labyrinths’, the new album from Orchestra of the Swan, released on 19th November 2021 on the Signum Classics label. More information