Black Oak Ensemble’s New Album, “Dance Of The Night Sky”

Released on Cedille Records, the album features contemporary works by living British women composers

The Black Oak Ensemble has now made its third release with Cedille Records, expanding the repertoire for string trio. The group comprises violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, cellist David Cunliffe, and violist Aurélien Fort Pederzoli. 

“Dance of the Night Sky” includes eight contemporary trios by multigenerational British women composers, including four world-premiere recordings. 

Dance of the Night Sky, the album’s title work, was written by Shirley J. Thompson specially for the Black Oak Ensemble. The album features its live premiere performance at the 2024 Soirée Cedille gala. 

Other world-premiere recordings are Carol J. Jones’s bulawayo railway, with music conjuring a steam train station in Zimbabwe; Grace-Evangeline Mason’s Into The Abyss, I Throw Roses, inspired by the enigmatic poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche; and Making Hay by Errolyn Wallen CBE, involving her arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Prelude in E Major from Book 1 of The Well Tempered Clavier.

More works include The Bagpiper’s String Trio by Dame Judith Weir, based on the life of James Reid, a Scottish bagpiper; Sally Beamish’s The King’s Alchemist; Freya Waley-Cohen’s Conjure; and Insight by Dobrinka Tavakova, which evokes the accordion and a brass fanfare. 

To purchase and listen to the album, click here. The album trailer can be viewed here. 

“Writing this trio, I started to think of the archetypal magical beings who are represented in threes,” Waley-Cohen explained of her piece, “three graces, three witches, three muses, three little pigs, three fates, three furies.”

This album forms part of the ensemble’s mission to uncover, perform, and record overlooked works for string trio, a less-common form in chamber music. Ruhstrat and Cunliffe are also founding members of the GRAMMY-nominated Lincoln Trio, while Fort Pederzoli founded Spektral Quartet. 

Dance of the Night Sky follows the Black Oak Ensemble’s two previous albums on Cedille: Avant L’Orage (2022) of rarely heard French string trios, and Silenced Voices (2019), featuring works by composers who perished in the Holocaust.

Avant l’orage reached #1 on the Billboard Classical Charts, was featured as Album of the week on Symphony Hall Sirius XM, and was nominated for a 2023 ICMA International Chamber Music Award. The albums have also been highlighted on The Violin Channel and BBC Radio 3.