Discography

Leçons de ténèbres (recorded at the University of Huddersfield)

October 2023

Available from NMC Records

This CD represents a landmark portrait of Patricia Alessandrini, created in close collaboration with the composer in recording sessions spanning three years. Covering the most significant instalments of her creative output over the last decade, Leçons de ténèbres showcases Riot’s extensive experience in close collaboration with composers in pieces that explore the edges of sound and electronics.

“These Alessandrini recordings are supremely well crafted, and the performances radiate a dedicated concern to do the music justice.” - Arnold Whittall, Gramophone (Dec ‘23)

This is Riot Ensemble's second co-production with HCR Records.

Vestige (August 2023)

Recorded in Cologne at Deutschlandfunk Studios

Available from Coviello Classics
Listen/Download at Bandcamp

Based upon our debut performance at London's Wigmore Hall during the COVID19 Pandemic, Vestige ranges from an intimate vocal solo by Naomi Pinnock, through pensive string trios of Alex Groves and Peter Wilson, to virtuosic chamber music of Ashkan Behzadi, Michaela Catranis and Enno Poppe. The album also includes Elizabeth Lutyens’ Requiescat, which was highlighted by Fiona Maddocks in a review in The Guardian:

“Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-83), whose recognition is long overdue, was among a group of composers commissioned to write a work in memory of Stravinsky, after his death in 1971. The result was Requiescat, which set lines from William Blake’s The Couch of Death, accompanied by string trio: five minutes of ethereal, quietly ebbing music that brings to mind Blake’s angel paintings…Each of these contrasting tracks is played with expression and finesse by this first-rate group.”

Vestige is Riot Ensemble's second co-production with Deutschlandfunk, and fourth production on the Coviello Contemporary label.

Cosmologies (June 2023)

Recorded at City University, London

Available from All That Dust
Listen/Download at Bandcamp

Riot Ensemble appears alongside soloist Séverine Ballon in a portrait CD of Aaron Einbond with his work Graphology. The album also features solo performances from Ballon (Xylography) and Alvise Sinivia (Cosmologies) .

“Aaron Holloway-Nahum leads the Riot Ensemble in an essay of supreme restraint, producing the smallest possible swatches of attenuated sounds in their most muted colours to build up a piece that exists without ever quite substantiating into a definable form. In retrospect, the most curious part is the way the musicians hold everything in poise without discernible momentum, yet never lapsing into torpor. The techniques here resemble Lachenmann in extremis, but the usual strained effect heard in music of this type is largely absent.”

- Ben Harper, Boring Like a Drill 02.10.23

Cosmologies is Riot Ensemble's debut on the All that Dust label.

Togetherness Music (January 2021)

Recorded at Challow Park Studios

Available from Intakt Records
Listen/Download at Bandcamp

A collaboration between Alexander Hawkins, Evan Parker and Riot Ensemble, this six-movement quasi-orchestral work is an extensive expansion and revision of a piece which originated with a commission from conductor and composer Aaron Holloway-Nahum for Riot Ensemble, to feature Hawkins and saxophone icon Evan Parker – with whom Hawkins has enjoyed a now more than decade-long musical association – as soloists. The new incarnation of the work features the original forces, augmented by additional acoustic improvisers and the electronic wizardry of Matthew Wright.

“Gentle tensions and a sense of the limitless firmament imbue further passages, with the majestic, mischievous strings of the Riot Ensemble converging and conversing, wheeling in to remote yet intimate spaces.”

- London Jazz News, 22.1.2021

Togetherness Music is Riot Ensemble’s debut with Intakt Records.

Speak, Be Silent (March 2019)

Recorded at Air Studios

Available from NMC Records

Named one of 2019’s most notable recordings by Alex Ross in the New Yorker.

First recordings of music by Chaya Czernowin (Ayre…Towed through plumes, thicket, asphalt, sawdust and hazardous air I shall not forget the sound of), Mirela Ivičević (Baby Magnify/Lilith’s New Toy; a Riot Ensemble commission), Liza Lim (Speak, Be Silent; with violin soloist Sarah Saviet) and Rebecca Saunders (Stirrings Still II), alongside Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Ró.

“The interwoven rhythmic intricacy in ‘Baby Magnify/Lilith’s New Toy’ coupled with the care to tone, nuance, and balance in Ró exemplifies the caliber of the performers and displays what makes Riot Ensemble so special. […] ‘Speak, Be Silent’ is a testament to Riot Ensemble’s vision and artistry. Each track on the album has a similar styling that makes the album cohesive, but the unique voices of the composers behind the music make each piece sound fresh and new. The attention to detail and the passion for new music is heard in every note of this project.”

- Jarrett Goodchild, I Care If You Listen, 29.5.2019

This is Riot Ensemble's second co-production with HCR Records.

Song Offerings (January 2019)

Recorded in Cologne at Deutschlandfunk Studios

Available from Coviello Classics
Listen/Download at Bandcamp

Riot Ensemble’s third studio album – Song Offerings – presents a set of four British Song Cycles. This CD takes the group back to the very beginning, as in their first professional concert in 2012, they presented Jonathan Harvey’s Song Offerings alongside a ‘sister’ work dedicated to him from their Artistic Director Aaron Holloway-Nahum (Plane Sailing).

“The title [of the album] comes from a work by Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012), four settings of texts by Rabindranath Tagore full of longing, joy and the embrace of death, sung with vivid expression by soprano Sarah Dacey. Harvey’s benign spirit hovers elsewhere: Aaron Holloway-Nahum’s Plane Sailing (from a poem by Sasha Dugdale), delicate and detailed, was written shortly before Harvey’s death, and is dedicated to him: a sorrowful lament about a fading life “frail as a cloud”. Laurence Osborn’s Micrographia, in which Dacey is joined by soprano April Frederick, delights in the wondrous microscopic world of the 17th-century natural philosopher Robert Hooke (text by poet Joseph Minden). Three songs by Samantha Fernando complete this well-balanced disc.”

- Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian, 15.3.2020

Chest of Toys (June 2018)

Recorded at Real World Studios

Available from Coviello Classics
Listen/Download at Bandcamp

A BBC comedian once quoted a member of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival as saying, "The problem with new music is often that it sounds like a box of children's toys falling down the stairs." The Riot Ensemble adopted this quote with humor and presents a 'toy box' with contemporary works by Thomas Kotcheff, Monica Pearce, Michael Cryne, Utku Asuroglu, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Franco Donatoni, Jack Sheen, and music selected from their 2016 Call for Scores: Lee Westood, Yukiko Watanabe and Heather Stebbins. The Riot Ensemble’s dedication to showcasing new music and bringing contemporary classical stylings to new audiences in unexpected venues is to be admired, respected, and imitated at every opportunity.

- I Care If You Listen

Approaching Dutilleux (September 2015)

Recorded at The Forge

Available from Coviello Classics
Listen/Download at Bandcamp

Approaching Dutilleux' is a series of recordings taken from a concert project that took place in London and Cambridge in May 2014. Scheduled on the one-year anniversary of Henri Dutilleux's death (22 May, 2013), five emerging composers from around the world were commissioned to write pieces inspired and/or informed by Dutilleux's masterwork Les Citations. This CD brings together all five of these new works, with their many different visions of - and approaches to - Dutilleux, along with Arlene Sierra's Petite Grue, written on the occasion of Dutilleux's visit to Cardiff University in 2008.