With great pleasure I’d like to announce the release of my new album, ‘Autumn Airs’, featuring eleven classic poems about the harvest season, set to music.
The album also features the voice of Tom Robinson, who kindly read lines from the poem ‘Autumn - A Dirge’, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
With this album, I’ve continued on my path of setting poetry to music. Earlier releases on this path were ‘Sonnets by Susan Evance’ (in two volumes) (2016) and ‘Thy Delightful Shade’ (2017).
One single was released from the album, a remixed version of the song ‘Autumn’, based on the poem by John Clare. It is included on the album as a bonus track.
Most songs on the album were composed using a standard ‘band’ setup: drums, bass, guitar(s) and (a lot of) keyboards. I’ve used many synthesized sounds, most of them self-designed. 24 of these synthesizer sounds can be downloaded for free from this website.
They’re in the Native Instruments Kontakt format (version 5.5 and up), and they’re free to use anywhere you like (although a designer credit is always appreciated). The synthesizer sounds have been named after mushroom species, in line with the album artwork.
'Sonnet 73' features a rather jazzy brass quartet: trumpet and three saxophones. A few sound effects can be heard on the album, like the French café atmosphere in 'En septembre'.
The vibraphone can be heard on several songs as it’s one of my favourite instruments. Ethnic sounds include the pan flute (Greek), the santur (Persian), the bandura (Ukrainian) and Latin American percussion.
