Reviews - Riverside 21/2/05
Soprano Claron McFadden, in mourning dress as writer Mary Shelley, is singing to her dead husband, whose ghostly image appears in the chair beside her. Behind her head, clouds boil in an unnatural frenzy. The music, which has up to now suggested the subdued foreboding of a Romantic string quartet, is energised by a funk-inflected bass line and swirling electronic sounds.Is this the future of new music? Riverside Studios saw the debut performance of Riley’s group MooV, founded to "revitalize the look and feel of new music events". This experiment was a success, among the best of its kind I have seen.
I enjoyed Riley’s subdued lyricism in these pieces, which merged the versatile live ensemble with subtle electronics "On The Sheltering Bars", which falls somewhere between chamber-opera and (pop) song-cycle sets nine poems by contemporary women poets, .... »more
Rob Witts (Classical Source)
Riverside Studios, London, Feb, 2005