James WEEKS: Plain Air – Lucy Goddard, mezzo-soprano • Siwan Rhys, piano
James WEEKS: Plain Air – Lucy Goddard, mezzo-soprano • Siwan Rhys, piano - Image 2

James WEEKS: Plain Air – Lucy Goddard, mezzo-soprano • Siwan Rhys, piano

£12.00 + P&P

 

‘I have walked out of the body and into the mountain. I am a manifestation of its total life, as is the starry saxifrage or the white-winged ptarmigan.’

Plain Air is a musical response to one of the most extraordinary and celebrated works of nature writing in English, The Living Mountain by the Scottish writer Nan Shepherd. This 53-minute work places Shepherd’s stunning, crystalline prose within an expansive and elemental musical landscape. Pianist Siwan Rhys (GBSR Duo) creates an environment of spacious stillness, surrounded by a halo of electronic tone, while singer Lucy Goddard (EXAUDI) retraces Shepherd’s path, reciting her text simply as she goes deeper into the mountain world and into herself.

Plain Air’s slow unfolding across almost an hour of music creates a deeply immersive listening experience in which Shepherd’s unique poetic voice, and the transcendental beauty and mystery of the Cairngorms, are vividly brought to life.

In stock

Released 14 August 2026
FHR197 Categories: , ,

Description

Released on a limited edition DigiSleeve CD and on all digital platforms: 14 August 2026

James WEEKS (b. 1978)
1. Plain Air (2021–23)                        [53:19]
for mezzo-soprano, piano and electronics

Lucy Goddard mezzo-soprano
Siwan Rhys piano

Recorded at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Oxford, UK, 12 September 2025
Produced by Nicholas Moroz and James Weeks
24bit, 48kHz high resolution recording, editing and mastering by Nicholas Moroz

Press Quotes

‘It’s an extraordinarily brave and self-confident piece of writing, and the performance is hypnotic and engrossing… There is no development, just the careful placing of musical events, but the reward for surrendering to it is very much the musical equivalent of staring into a big sky: the passing of time and any sense of destination rendered irrelevant, until the voice and piano and their electronic frame is all there is’  (The Arts Desk)

‘Stunning…filled with space and light’ (BBC Radio 3, New Music Show)