Montagu: In A South Downs Way

Robert Sword (piano), Stewart Prosser (trumpet, flugelhorn), Will Spencer (trumpet, piccolo trumpet), Dave Gale (trombone) Tippett Quartet

Montagu: High Above The Downs Flint And Clay Memorial Stone Reflections I The Path Towards Tomorrow Skylark England Green Reflections II Ancient Footfall High Woods Reflections III High Woods Continued Blue Hill Reflections IV Flint And Clay Reprise Reflections V

Original poems written and spoken by Hugh Bonneville. ‘The Path Towards Tomorrow’ was Hugh Bonneville’s pick on Desert Island Disc and went straight at #1 on the classical charts for two weeks. Hugh Bonneville is currently promoting this project in the press tour for his upcoming play. Damian Montague has done a number of commercial compositions in the past including Waitrose. South Downs are the home of both Hugh Bonneville and Damian Montague. This is the start of a wider brand of compositions inspired by walking spots around England. The WALK UPON ENGLAND project is a celebration of the English countryside as a source of creativity in music and poetry. At its heart is a suite of music composed by England’s rural living musicians and poets who find their inspiration from walking within the beauty, scale and atmosphere of the country’s unspoiled panoramas and habitats. The idea for the project was born in Sussex. Composer Damian Montagu was walking alone in the South Downs and wrote melodies during a number of meditative, introspective journeys, capturing them on a portable device as he walked. These recordings formed the basis of the album, ‘In a South Downs Way’, compositions for which were worked-up in Damian’s Sussex recording studio with the help of Hampshire musician and ex-Paul Weller side-man Stewart Prosser, who co-produced and collaborated on arrangements. The actor Hugh Bonneville shares a love of the South Downs and has lived nearby most of his life. Having heard the instrumental recording, he contributed some reflections of his own, narrating them as interludes on the finished album. WALK UPON ENGLAND will comprise a series of similar albums, created with writers and poets who live in other locations in the English countryside. Each individual work will evoke a distinct region of the country and over time these will build into a body of work which might best be described as a soundscape of England.