Voices

"Skilful and elegant" (Sunday Times)
"Beautifully-imagined" (Financial Times)
"Explosive energy" (Times)

Committed, persuasive and highly accomplished performances of an exceptional composing voice of our time.
INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW, March 2006 issue

"Tarik O'Regan (b1978) is a significant new British voice, who deserves to be heard far and wide. His music communicates through the well-explored channels of warm, chordal sonority, but, crucially, neglects neither rhythmic vitality nor polyphonic weave. Consequently, there's a real rigour to his music, and when it is performed with as much commitment as it is here, it is a transporting experience. Care Charminge Sleepe is one of the best pieces of English choral music I've heard in ages and is here given a heart-wrenching performance. The Dorchester Canticles, written to partner Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, is marvellous, ebullient stuff. The sound of Clare choir is youthful and sometimes fragile, but that is mostly to its benefit. There is an urgent immediacy to their sound, as there is to the recording quality. Only occasionally do they overblow in pursuit of an uncompromising fortissimo. It's a shame the accompanying organ is an electronic, whose diodes contribute a slightly sour note to the blend, but it is incisively operated by James MacVinnie. Tim Brown has pulled this choir up by its bootstraps over the past 25 years. Just now, Clare College Choir burns perhaps brightest of all in Cambridge's well-stocked choral firmament." BBC Music William Whitehead

This landmark release introduces the choral music of Tarik O'Regan, a major new voice on the British choral music scene, and winner of the vocal category of the 2005 British Composer Awards.

Born in London in 1978, British Composer Award winner Tarik O'Regan was educated at Oxford University and completed his postgraduate studies at Cambridge, where he was subsequently appointed Composer in Residence at Corpus Christi College. Described as skilful and elegant (Sunday Times, London) and beautifully-imagined (Financial Times, London), his compositions have been performed internationally by, among others, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, BBC Singers and Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Living in New York City since 2004, O'Regan has held the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship in Music Composition at Columbia University and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard; he is currently a Research Affiliate on the Visiting Faculty of Yale University's Institute of Sacred Music.

His 2006 debut disc, VOICES (Collegium Records), was released to critical acclaim, heralding O'Regan as one of the most original and eloquent of young composers (Observer, London), breathing new life into the idiom (Telegraph, London). International Record Review declared the recording a committed, persuasive and highly accomplished performance of an exceptional composing voice of our time, while BBC Music Magazine gave the disc a double five-star rating.