Ergodos is proud to announce the release of Joy, an album of music for voice and violin written and performed by Andrew Hamilton. An acclaimed composer, who has been commissioned by leading international soloists, ensembles, orchestras and festivals, this is Hamilton’s debut album as a soloist performing his own material. The tracks here are by turns intricate and virtuosic, deadpan, enraged, hauntingly elegiac, and movingly personal. Joy is an important document of intimate and original work by one of our most strikingly individual artists.
The composer writes: “The pieces on this album chart a direct line back to my beginnings as a musician – I was an annoying child who was always singing and at seven I started learning the violin. Writing fragments down, singing along with them was a natural consequence and I retreated into this little world of melodies I had created. After years of study I found my way back to this type of ‘beginners mind’. Performing my own works gave me the space to really experiment with material and form. I couldn’t have written my larger scale works without being able to retreat back into remembering what made me a musician in the first place – the sheer joy of non-thinking, being in the midst of sound and patterns – the things that bind together musicians of any tradition across our planet. These pieces are my most direct and personal – they deal with love, art, the horrors of learning solfège, breaking voices, and memory.”
Andrew Hamilton was born in Dublin in 1977 and studied in Ireland, England and The Netherlands. Recently, he has had works performed by Crash Ensemble, An assembly, Chamber Choir Ireland, members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, EXAUDI, London Contemporary Orchestra, Juliet Fraser/Maxime Echardour, Michelle O’Rourke, Oliver Coates, and Eliza McCarthy. In 2018, NMC released the first portrait album of his work, and in the summer of 2019 his work was performed at the Tectonics and Tanglewood festivals. andyf
hamilton.com
Andrew Hamilton is supported by a grant from the PRS Foundation’s Open Fund.