Alastair White: Robe Rosie Middleton, Clara Kanter, Jenni Hogan, Ben Smith

• Alastair White (b. 1988): Robe, Pt. 1:
• 1 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Beira's Warning 04:19
• 2 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Song of Redness 04:17
• 3 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Neachneohain's Speech 07:46
• 4 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Rowan's First Answer 01:01
• 5 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Song of Silk 03:44
• 6 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Duet 00:48
• 7 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Beira's Speech 03:32
• 8 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Rowan's Second Answer 00:49
• 9 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Song of Heather 02:47
• 10 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Rowan's Vision 02:40
• 11 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Song of Sandstone 01:27
• 12 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Neachneohain's Vision 01:38
• 13 White: Robe, Pt. 1: The Arming of Rowan, the History of the World 03:37
• 14 White: Robe, Pt. 1: Song of Morning 00:50
• Robe, Pt. 2:
• 15 White: Robe, Pt. 2: Edinburgh Awakes - Rowan Descends 05:15
• 16 White: Robe, Pt. 2: A Dream of Q-el's City - Wake Up , Rowan 01:31
• 17 White: Robe, Pt. 2: Rowan and Edinburgh 06:41
• 18 White: Robe, Pt. 2: Anthem 04:03
• 19 White: Robe, Pt. 2: Beira's Vision 06:59
• 20 White: Robe, Pt. 2: Epilogue 02:07
• Total Runtime 01:05:51

Info for Alastair White: Robe

This recording of Alastair White’s ‘fashion-opera’ ROBE features the original cast from the premiere performance as part of Tête-à-Tête, London in 2019. The unique concept employs only four female singers with flute and piano, but also dancers and actors, in this futuristic drama. The work was shortlisted for the Creative Edinburgh Award and described as “striking and evocative” (Planet Hugill)

In a society where the difference between the real and the virtual is no longer meaningful, a powerful new being threatens the stability which holds these worlds together. Two elders, Neachneohain and Beira, convince the young cartographer Rowan to complete a terrible task: descend into the mind of the superintelligence EDINBURGH and map this creature so as to grant its desire – to become a living city, teeming with human life and activity. Witnessing visions of the awful realness of life beyond cyberspace, Rowan agrees – plunging into its depths: a strange, abstract world of data and dream.

Thirty years later, Rowan and EDINBURGH have fallen in love, have lived their lives together. Though every morning she awakes with no memory of the past, Rowan has almost completed the map that EDINBURGH desires. But into this map Rowan has woven something else: something hidden, silent, unsaid. As these rifts in the structure undo causality itself, she must answer the question: what exactly has she created? And what does it have to do with this strange, otherworldly figure who sings the red song of a forgotten city – of an ancient, poisoned ROBE…

Clara Kanter, mezzo-soprano
Rosie Middleton, mezzo-soprano
Sarah Parkin, soprano
Kelly Poukens, soprano
Jenni Hogan, flute
Ben Smith, piano

Rosie Middleton
specialises in new music and collaborates with composers internationally. Contemporary opera credits include Laura Bowler’s GOLD (Riot Ensemble), Will Todd’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Royal Opera House), Catherine Kontz’s A Certain Sense of Order (UK/ Luxembourg), and recently being cast in Matt Rogers’ She Described it to Death (Royal Opera House).

Clara Kanter
studied at Clare College, Cambridge and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Contemporary roles include Winnie (The Miller’s Wife, Grimeborn) and The Boy (The Tsar Has His Photograph Taken). Ensemble work incudes Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht (Birmingham Opera Company), Janice Kerbel’s Doug (Montreal Biennale), and Berio’s Coro (Det Norske Solistkor/Grete Pedersen,Lucerne Festival Academy/ Sir Simon Rattle).

Jenni Hogan
Hogan’s recent highlights include performances at SJSS, Barbican, BBC1 and Radio 3, at Darmstadt, PrincipalSound and London Ear.

She has appeared as an improviser in numerous film scores (with three premieres in the last 18 months). Jenni is the recipient of the Stanley Burton Scholarship at Leeds University, where she is working for her PhD.

Ben Smith
is a London-based composer and performer specialising in contemporary music.

He is interested in – amongst other things – phenomenological and semiotic approaches to musical analysis, and compositional encounters with silence and repetition. Ben graduated from City, University of London in 2015, and from Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 2018, where he studied with Laurence Crane, Rolf Hind, and James Weeks.

Sarah Parkin
specialises in contemporary music and opera, with recent performances in London (Tête-à-Tête Festival, London Cavalcade, Rough for Opera), Luxembourg (Theatre Centaure), and Austria (impuls Festival).

Most recently, she appeared as a finalist in the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition (Canada); and will premiere the opera ‘A Kinder Society’ by Amy Bryce (for Stiftung Kunst und Musik für Dresden).

Kelly Poukens
winner Stiftung Blatow prize 2018, Germany / 2nd Prize Honda Competition 2017, Belgium/ etc. – made an international impression with La Voix Humaine and Sequenza III.

Recent highlights include Trouble in Tahiti (Dutch National Opera), Manon (Théâtre des Champs-Elysées), King Lear (Holland Opera), and solo recitals at the Henry Le Boeuf hall (Belgium) and Het Muziekgebouw Frits Philips (The Netherlands).

Booklet for Alastair White: Robe