Music

A CD is now available of the Little Imber music composed by Giya Kancheli for the Artangel event at Imber in August 2003. It features the Netherlands Chamber Choir, Rascher Sazophone Quartet and Matrix Ensemble.

This CD was reviewed by Andrew Clements in The Guardian on 4 July 2008:

"In 2003, Giya Kancheli collaborated with Artangel, the London-based arts production company, on the Imber Project, which was part-installation part-musical performance, staged in the deserted village of Imber on Salisbury Plain. If the event itself was rather disappointing, the opportunity to visit this remote spot, whose population was evicted when it was requisitioned by the MoD during the second world war and which is still used for training troops in urban warfare, was priceless.
After the audience had been led through the ghost village, Kancheli's Little Imber was performed in the village church as the climax of the performance. Even at the time it seemed inadequate. Something composed for such a singular occasion needs more than the familiar Kancheli mixture of saccharine choral writing and snatches of faux baroque tracery, complete with the usual intrusion of more brutal and martial music. Hearing it on disc only confirms the thinness of the 35-minute piece. The companion piece here, Amao Omi, from 2005, inhabits more or less the same musical world, but with its choral writing set against more urgent saxophone textures, the effect is less cloying and more purposeful."

The CD is available on offer from The Guardian click here

Song of the Open Downs

Song of the Open Downs was written about Imber by Ruth Underwood in August 2001. The CD booklet includes 30 archive photographs of old Imber and pictures by Austin Underwood of the protests and church services in the 1960s. The CD will be included with the book, Forever Imber, when published. 

To hear a sample of the CD, click here to download a MP3 file (712 Kb) with just over 1 minute of the recording.