Oh Sleep, Why Dost Thou Lie to Me?

In AOP composer Tarik O'Regan's (Heart of Darkness, The Wanton Sublime) latest piece "The Night's Untruth," for choir, brass, and organ, the answer is simple: sleep is "a parallel, possibly dystopian, existence to the one in our waking hours." Whoa.  No wonder my dreams are crazy.  But that's for another blog post...

The piece, which was shortlisted for this year's British Composer Awards and voted by Time Out: London as one of the Best of the Year 2010: Classical Concerts in London, "explores the theme of sleep as a metaphor, with death, love, fear, ecstasy, isolation, dreaming and rest all providing textual ‘variations on the theme’, drawing on poems across the centuries by Keats, Shakespeare, Samuel Daniel and Hart Crane."  Attendees of the John Armitage Memorial (JAM) trust's 10th anniversary concert last March got to experience this dream-like piece in person when they heard it via the BBC Singers (directed by Nicholas Cleobury), Onyx Brass and organist Stephen Disley.  Clearly music critic Jonathan Lennie was entranced as well, since it was this concert that made his Top 5 listing for the Time Out: London review.

"The Night's Untruth" has also been jointly commissioned by JAM and the American choir Vocal Essense to give its US premiere under director Philip Brunelle during the 2010-11 season.

Sleep well, fair readers.  Tarik O'Regan certainly is.