Composer, sound artist and Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Reid releases Big Majestic today, August 30 on New Amsterdam / Eclipse Projects.
The mesmerising album uses music written for her acclaimed GPS-enabled work of public art, Ellen Reid Soundwalk, a project which reimagines urban parks as interactive soundscapes. Featuring performances by the Kronos Quartet, Shabaka Hutchings, and several other leading musicians, it's a transformative and meditative album that finds Reid exercising her towering compositional command and casting her unique voice into fresh shapes.
Stylistically, the music explores ambient maximalism whilst traversing the worlds of jazz, post-rock, ambient, and minimalism, utilising magnificently layered Synths, Strings, Harps, and Horns. Taking inspiration from public parks in vibrant cities across the globe, Big Majestic is a sonic excursion through spaces of respite and recreation.
The album's star-studded list of guest appearances includes the Kronos Quartet soaring above desert vistas on West Coast Sky Forever, Shabaka Hutchings' kaleidoscopic shakuhachi and tenor saxophone meditations on Spiritual Sun and Primrose Hill, James McVinnie performing an electrifying synth organ epic on Blue Sky | Mirrored Glass, and the otherworldly voice of Lisel beckoning the listener into the unknown.
Stream the album now or buy a copy through bandcamp here!
