blue nine: Whitney George

C10+C40+C27+C15+C40 in a handmade wooden chest

One wooden chest, five tapes, and more than two hours of music! Following up our most recent release by Katie Gately (the shortest release we've ever put out) is our longest ever release, this selection from the New York-based composer Whitney George. Fascinated by interdisciplinary working methods, Whit's music draws its primary influence from classic surrealism, Dante, 19th Century proto-magic realism, phobias, science, nature, silent cinema, and Edgar Allen Poe. Incredibly, her music also manages to sound like these things!

As well as being some of the most elegant, this may also be some of the most playful music we've ever released. Whitney is as hyper-literate in composition as she is in her cultural tastes, and her ability to use this knowledge for locating a musical voice for non-musical objects feels effortless and natural. All of these musical thoughts are dreamed into life, meanwhile, by The Curiosity Cabinet, a hand-picked chamber orchestra Whitney assembled specifically for her work. Whitney has been the recipient of several major awards and artist-in-residence honours for her meticulously crafted orchestral, chamber, and operatic pieces.

Currently studying for her doctorate, Whitney already has a quite staggering portfolio to her name and she is super-prodigious, to the extent that we had to keep moving this release back because she kept submitting new and ever more amazing pieces!

These are the tone poems, plays, and other curious creations that you will find in our box set:

Inferno: the Nine Circles of Suffering (for String Quartet)
Le Lobster Phone: seven surrealist statements from the notebooks of Salvador Dali
Stained Glass: for flute, violin, & percussion
‘Illusion’ from ‘The Crimson Hand (prelude to the radio drama for orchestra and tape)
The Crimson Hand (a radio drama for orchestra and voice actors)
The Masochist’s Tango (for solo violin)