American music strikes a remarkable chord
This weekend, Stephen Layton's Polyphony will reunite with the Britten Sinfonia and the American composer Morten Lauridsen. They will be performing Lauridsen's settings of poems by Robert Graves, Mid-Winter Songs, in Norwich and Ely Cathedrals. Fitting venues for music one critic described as " shamelessly ecstatic ", but they are a far cry from the last time the Polyphony/Britten Sinfonia/Lauridsen combination were together in the public eye. That was at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles, home of the LA Lakers basketball team, for 2006's Grammy awards where they had been shortlisted in the choral music section for their Hyperion recording of Lux Aeterna, Lauridsen's settings of sacred Latin texts. Layton (above), the Polyphony founder and director, says he reluctantly declined the opportunity to mingle with Kanye West and U2 - " it's a nine-hour ceremony!" - and the award eventually went to Leonard Slatkin's recording of Bolcom's Songs