Album: Piers Hellawell, Airs, Waters (Delphian)

The impressive range of Piers Hellawell's work is displayed on this collection of six compositions, five of which are premiere recordings.

The orchestral piece "Degrees of Separation" is a fascinating study of initial momentum dissolving into musical entropy, while the piano solo "Basho" is named not for the poet but the sumo contest, reflected in its 15 brief tussles between major and minor. Another piano piece, "Airs, Waters and Floating Islands", shifts between bluesy runs and more reflective passages; blues echoes are also discernible in "Agricolas", featuring clarinet and orchestra in a succession of whirligig encounters whose inquisitive, expectant figures are stained with urban mystery: a large-scale palette applied with the most delicate of brushwork.

Download: Agricolas; Basho; Degrees of Separation