The Album
Collaboration…
Being a part of a chamber ensemble is all about collaboration. Each member brings their own ideas, experiences, and skills to the table each time we meet; every time we play together we become collaborators in something bigger than the individual.
The Album Strata is born out of that spirit of collaboration.
As an ensemble that has been together for over a decade we have been incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to collaborate with some incredible musicians, composers, and artists, and Strata is the culmination of that work.
As a quartet we have collaborated on each of the pieces recorded on the Album in some way shape or form. From the first piece ever written for us Sub to street to scraping the sky by Charlotte Harding, through early commissions such as Michael Cryne’s Frost Flowers, working with Benjamin Oliver on Avalanche, and four works specifically commissioned for the Album Deep City (Clare Loveday) , Electric Aeroplanes (Anna Appleby), Star Clusters (Denise Ondishko), and Zephyrs (Howard Skempton), this project has been about more than creating new music: it has been about creating lasting bonds between friends and musicians that hopefully you can hear in these pieces.
Conception…
The idea of concept albums may seem like something from a bygone era, however Strata is an album with an overriding theme:
Whether the subject is geology, oceanography, meteorology or sociology, a stratum is a layer that is distinguished in someway from the layers below it and above it. Defined by these upper and lower boundaries – created through changes such as sedimentary deposits, sunlight penetration, atmospheric pressure or social class – a stratum can only be understood as such , diving or ascending on a perpendicular axis. It’s that perpendicular movement that makes a stratum what it is, that identifies it as something different from what lies above or below. This debut CD by the Laefer Quartet is organised around a movement up through physical strata, from under the ground to the heavens above.
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
The different pieces on the album are each start in a different layer, although many of them traverse through layers. In particular, the album explores the difference between manmade layers and natural layers, beginning in the rumbling subways of New York, and ending in the outer heavens.
creation…
Recorded over 3 days at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, we had the joy of working with Aaron Holloway-Nahum from the Coviello label. Not only is Aaron a fantastic sound engineer and producer, but is himself an amazing composer and conductor, and his calm demeanour and amazing musical ears were invaluable in the recording process.
Colours…
The Artwork you see on the album is also a product of collaboration between us, and artist/saxophonist Bekki Lamstaes and musician Joseph Spinoza. Joseph has synaesthesia; a perceptual phenomenon that means he sees colours, shapes and patterns when he listens to music, and he describes these experiences to Bekki who paints her interpretation of what he describes. Bekki created a miniature for each of the pieces before combining all 7 to form the album cover art.