New Release – Electric Fields
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The album Electric Fields, a new recording featuring Barbara Hannigan, the Labèque sisters, and David Chalmin, was released on May 9, 2025. This bold new project reimagines early music through voice, pianos, and live electronics.
Composers: Hildegard von Bingen, David Chalmin, Barbara Hannigan, Bryce Dessner, Barbara Strozzi
Artists: Barbara Hannigan, David Chalmin, Katia Labèque, Marielle Labèque
Electric Fields offers modern arrangements of centuries-old vocal music, as well as new compositions, all involving soprano, pianos, and live electronics. The meditative compositions of medieval polymath Hildegard von Bingen are the point of departure for this album. Hildegard's texts soar to the spiritual realm both in Latin and in her invented lingua ignota. Additionally, the vernacular love songs of two composers from the Italian Baroque, Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini, gave inspiration for this album. Several works from American composer Bryce Dessner complete the eclectic programme.
May 9, 2025, Outhere-music, Alpha
"Is there beauty in all this? Certainly, particularly when Hannigan’s fluid voice spirals high above Katia and Marielle Labèque’s patterned capers or the interesting textures generated from synthesisers, laptop, and a jungle of wiring by the French composer and musician David Chalmin."
May 12, 2025, The Times: The best classical albums of 2025 so far, Geoff Brown
"... like a fever dream ... mesmerizing, melismatic … subtle, droning electronics … larger dreamscape ... both ethereal and sensual, this performance would make a fitting soundtrack for that unknowable journey.
om Huizenga, Full Article
"The plans for this recording began with the Labèque sisters. ... Together with Chalmin's space-age electronics, these are as much from another time as they are out of this world. ... The second half, Chalmin's arrangement of the Strozzi composition, gives the Labèque sisters ample opportunities to shine."
May 12, 2025, Stereophile.com, Jason Victor Serinus.