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Alex Ho's The Glass Eye - a planet destroyed

The latest sounds from across the UK and beyond including an improvisation by the sheng player Wu Wei and Alex Ho's song cycle The Glass Eye sung by countertenor Hugh Cutting.

Tom Service introduces some of the latest sounds - including an improvisation by the sheng player Wu Wei and a work for percussion, electronics and ice by Vivian Fung that laments and celebrates the disappearing ice in the Columbia Icefields. Also tonight, as performed by Apartment House at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Lithuanian artist and composer Ram奴nas Motiekaitis's Snowless NY 1949, a work which reflects Motiekaitis鈥檚 life as part of the Lithuanian diaspora in New York after the Second World War. And at the centre of the programme comes The Glass Eye, a major song cycle by the award-winning composer Alex Ho. Elayce Ismail's words present a scenario in which a climate apocalypse has forced the survivors underground, to become part of the mud, at one with the worms, able to view the planet on which they lived - and which their pollution has destroyed - solely through a single lens, the eponymous Glass Eye. The world premiere by countertenor Hugh Cutting with the pianist Dylan Perez took place at the Oxford International Song Festival.

1 hour, 59 minutes

Last on

Sat 6 Jan 2024 22:00

Music Played

  • Wu Wei

    Forest of bamboos

    Performer: Wu Wei.
  • Will Harmer

    Fireworks

    Choir: National Youth Choirs of Great Britain. Conductor: Emily Dickens.
    • Young Composers 5.
    • NMC.
    • 7.
  • Kaija Saariaho

    Asteroid 4179: Toutatis

    Orchestra: Kiel Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Emilia Hoving.
  • Ramunas Motiekaitis

    Snowless NY 1949

    Ensemble: Apartment House.
  • Colin Riley

    III. The Smallest Play of Leaves (from ''Earth Voices")

    Orchestra: Helsingborgs Symfoniorkester. Conductor: David Niemann.
  • Vivian Fung

    The Ice is Talking

    Performer: Steven Schick.
    • Soundlines: On Language and the Land.
    • Islandia Music.
    • 2.
  • Alex Ho

    The Glass Eye

    Performer: Dylan Perez. Singer: Hugh Cutting.
  • Millicent B. James

    Children of the Forest

    Choir: National Youth Choirs of Great Britain. Choir: Emily Dickens.
    • Young Composers 5.
    • NMC.
    • 1.

Broadcast

  • Sat 6 Jan 2024 22:00

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