Jo Quail - The Cartographer - CD DIGIPAK

Internationally acclaimed composer and virtuoso cellist from London Jo Quail announces her new studio album “The Cartographer”, set for release on May 6th!

“The Cartographer” is a piece commissioned by the renowned Roadburn Festival, who will host its premiere performance in April 2022 at the 013 venue in Tilburg, the Netherlands! The project, initially planned for 2020, explores the space where classical instrumentation and contemporary heavy music intersect.

In Jo Quail’s words: “What makes music heavy? In my opinion, as an artist and composer straddling both classical and contemporary genres the concept of heaviness in music is experienced via the intention of the composer, and then the delivery of the performance. Arguably heaviness is an emotional concept, reaching far beyond the confines of volume, speed and instrumentation.”

Due to delays in the live premiere of the commissioned project, Jo was afforded the opportunity to record “The Cartographer” with the assistance of the PRS ‘Women Make Music Award’. “The Cartographer” was recorded in Holland at Groenland Studios with the full ensemble of contributing musicians, and will be released as a studio album on May 6th this year! An incredible landmark, but one from which there is so much more coming into view for the future.

When composing the piece, Jo Quail decided almost immediately to write for trombones, specifically eight members of the acclaimed Dutch ensemble The New Trombone Collective. The first thing she envisaged was the juxtaposition of a solo violin accompanied by a huge wave of brass, and the form of “The Cartographer” emerged from this sound world. She scored for extensive orchestral percussion (including the largest TamTam she could get hold of!) and included herself on electric cello with her usual set up incorporating live looping, a pianist, and two vocalists, both parts written with and specifically for these individual singers.

“The Cartographer” is a piece composed of prose of five phrases, each phrase containing an intention for the different movements. Each of these musical phrases is pared through the artist’s pitch system and created the musical motif on which the whole work is based.

Jo Quail comments: “The music I write tends to evolve even after I’ve recorded and released it and having, unexpectedly, had the extra time to spend with The Cartographer has allowed me to deepen my connection to it. It has grown in a way that means whilst the dots on the page remain unchanged, it’s somehow not quite the same piece I would have presented in 2020 but it tells the same story – I hope, better!

I tend to have a very particular structure in mind when I begin writing, and this was especially true for “The Cartographer” – I can then work more intuitively to paint the narrative within that framework. There is always a narrative or story that I’m telling, and those listening will create their own story from what they hear – I love that.”