An exciting new collaboration between the rising British composer John Metcalfe and the internationally renowned cellist Matthew Barley. The project is summed up well by Barley’s description:

“Metcalfe’s music fascinates me: John has been super-busy working on all the arrangements for Peter Gabriel’s new album, but has found time to write a new suite of pieces for cello and piano. The remainder of the CD will be cello and electronics - sometimes very subtle, as in the Suite of 4ths (where the computer adds a 4th below each note I play, so that when I play two notes at once, you hear a sumptuous 4-note chord), and sometimes forming a large part of the musical landscape, as in Constant Filter. The latter piece was one I commissioned 3 years ago for the On The Road tour, and was the runaway success of that programme.” Matthew Barley.

This release coincides with a run of concerts based around John’s music that Matthew is doing at Kings Place in London and follows the 2009 disc with jazz pianist Julian Joseph, Dance of the Three-Legged Elephants.

“Matthew Barley was in residence at Kings Place for a few days and I thoroughly enjoyed the two evenings I attended. He is an exemplary cellist, his mind seemingly as focussed as his tone, whether he is dispatching Beethoven’s last two sonatas (assisted by the superb Kit Armstrong) with the appropriate blend of rigorous Classicism, inwardness and gruffness, or presenting newer pieces by Armstrong and the almost equally young Misha Mullov-Abbado…Barley should be given the run of the place again." Tully Potter, The Strad, December 2009