The sun is free to flow with the sea

Album review

It has been gratifying to see various releases from Britain's contemporary music-oriented NMC label show up on best-seller charts, and this may be occurring because the label has shown a knack for finding engaging programming. Consider The Sun is Free to Flow with the Sea, which marks the 30th anniversary of the ensemble Onyx Brass, which made the charts in the summer of 2023. The pieces were all written for the group, but the briefs given to the composers were apparently quite flexible, for there is a striking variety here, and listeners unmoved by one work will definitely find something more to their liking around the corner. Several pieces incorporate sounds beyond those of the brass instruments; Zoë Martlew's Kiss, Kiss features spoken text as well as the titular activity, while Yshani Perinpanayagam's Music for My Stolen Breath includes transcriptions of the composer's breathing rhythms after she suffered a racist attack at work. The forces employed are quite diverse. Even the more conventional brass pieces contain extramusical references. Several pieces hang on a tension between the brass quintet medium and American vernacular idioms; sample the Blues movement of Mark-Anthony Turnage's ONYX30. Turnage is relatively well known, but many of the composers here will be new even to British listeners, and they would seem to be worth checking out further.

© James Manheim /TiVo