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Untold Things |
"Middle-eastern ululations
and tumbling sitars, medieval oboe and Latin chants,
and the swick-swick of summer swifts are all in
the mix of a lovely poised creation."
Neil
Spencer,
The Observer
"Untold Things has the sincerity
and astringent spirituality of a mass in an unknown
language"
David Honigmann,
Financial Times
"Untold Things ... has enough
layers to keep you constantly alert for the unexpected.
For example, Red Song mixes together a traditional
string section with extracts from Verdi's Requiem
(turned backwards) and voice samples from the
farthest outposts of the former USSR."
Adam Sweeting,
The Guardian 9/3/01
"Untold Things is her most
ambitious stand-alone work to date: 11 string-driven
choral pieces (ululations and sampled Yemenite
chants included) that inhabit the space between
contemporary classical and new age - Ligeti meets
Enya, sort of - with a wonderfully Byzantine choice
of instrumentation (shaum, psaltery and qanun)
too. Haunting but surprisingly accessible."
Peter Kane,
Q Magazine
"Stylistically she is the
love-child of Enya and Michael Nyman... Thus,
there are plenty of breathy vocals, harmonic repetitions,
and raw open-throated Eastern-European folk singing,
plus some ominous booming pedal notes, and the
whole is invested with an air of not-unpleasing
melancholy."
Warwick Thompson,
Classic FM Magazine May 2001
"Jocelyn Pook is a subversive
composer whose heart lies in the avant-guarde
classical world.... That edginess marks her latest
album, Untold Things, in which Pook takes listeners
between worlds, effecting a surreal global classicism.
Ethnic vocal samples mix with live voices, including
the fragile soprano of Melanie Pappenheim, and
are set in beds of strings and Western choirs.
Pook uses new-age and world-music signposts to
seduce us, including the gorgeous gothic lament
'Dionysus' that opens the album. Later, she reveals
a sound that's more dangerous and rewarding"
JD,
Billboard 14/4/01
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| Flood |
"Pook's faintly
beautiful, profoundly sad music is all that hovers
above her ashen, apocalyptic landscapes .....
A bleak and somber work, and an utterly absorbing
one."
--Terry Wood
"Alternatively soothing and
engaging, Flood demonstrates why Pook is a popular
classical/crossover artist in the UK"
Heather Phares,
All Music Guide
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| Deluge |
"..it is with
this solo project that she shows her mettle as
a composer of imagination and ingenuity"
Louise Gray,
The Wire
"Pook's multi-layered requiem
for the end of the century makes compelling listening.....
(she) moves gracefully through her diverse material
with a modicum of electronics to create intriguing
textures."
Louise Gray,
The Guardian
"Eclectic, electronic and
ideologically as supple as Tony Blair in the square
mile, Deluge scrambles sounds from four great
religions and two cultural millenniums."
Norman Lebrecht,
The Daily Telegraph 9/4/97
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| Eyes
Wide Shut |
"...magnificent
score written for the film by Jocelyn Pook. It
is one of the most varied and compelling in all
Kubrick's work." The Economist, 17th July 1999
"... a brilliantly disturbing score by Jocelyn
Pook... " Los Angeles Times, July 16th 1999 "magisterial
use of music - 22 minutes of it by Pook...."
Variety, July 12th
1999
"..originality and eclecticism...
the work of British composer Jocelyn Pook appears
here as a revelation - minimalist, exotic, rich
and soul-stirring... A musical tableau painted
with broad but exacting strokes."
Billboard, July 24th
1999
"a magical score by Jocelyn
Pook"
Hollywood Reporter,
12th July, 1999
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| Time
Out (L'Emploi du Temps) |
"Time Out
is immeasurably enhanced by composer Jocelyn Pook's
somber score"
Hollywood Reporter,
1st April 2002
"....Jocelyn Pook's ominous,
string-laden score ....ratcheting up the unease"
Anthony Quinn,
The Independent
"Jocelyn Pook's score for
strings - she did Eyes Wide Shut too, remember?
- is chilly but suits cameraman Pierre Milon's
cool, deliberate style"
Alexander Walker,
Evening Standard April 2002
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| Requiem |
Score written
for Phoenix Dance Theatre's Requiem, choreographed
by Darshan Singh Buller
"Jocelyn Pook's haunting
vocal Requiem heightens the emotion.."
Stephanie Ferguson,
The Guardian 18/2/03
"...the music of Jocelyn
Pook ... captures perfectly the wildly different
moods - a snappy tango for the window-shopping
scenes, snatches of requiem mass when hopes begin
to fade."
Jenny Gilbert,
The Independent
"..spine-tingling score by
Jocelyn Pook"
Val Javin,
Huddersfield Daily Examiner 27/2/03
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| Mobile
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Piece written in collaboration
with Andrew Motion for the King's Singers' 2002
Proms Concert
"Last night at the Proms,
for the first time, no one hissed through their
teeth or harrumphed when the Nokia theme tune
rang out around the Albert Hall.... Pook, in collaboration
with Andrew Motion, who wrote the lyrics, had
incorporated the melody into Mobile, a work written
to mark the Golden Jubilee."
Diary,
The Times 26/7/02
"Yet there was room for irreverence
as well. Jocelyn Pook made musical use of Nokia's
most annoying ring-tone in her setting of Andrew
Motion's Mobile..."
Tom Service,
The Guardian
"Jocelyn Pook and Andrew
Motion's Mobile made ....a... musical joke with
that mobile ring tone"
Matthew Rye,
The Daily Telegraph 27/7/03
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| Phantasmaton |
Score commissioned by Shobana
Jeyasingh Dance Company for their production Phantasmaton
"Jocelyn Pook's supple score
(traditional South Asian singing
layered with western postminimalism) adds
to the mix"
Judith
Mackrell,
The Guardian 6/2/02
"Jocelyn Pook's
cyclical music ..... floats on a mixture of Arabic,
aboriginal and other non-European vocals, including
the machinated counting language (taccata taccata
tac) of bharata natyam"
Donald Hutera,
The Times 8/2/02
"Jocelyn Pook's score adds
a layer of a sharp modernity"
Jakki Phillips,
Evening Argus 7/2/02
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| Blight
|
Film made in collaboration with
film-maker John Smith for BBC Sound On Film series
"Composer Jocelyn Pook has
sampled the thoughts of those evicted and combined
them with the sounds of destruction to ingenious
and powerful effect"
EP,
Time Out
"John Smith let images of
derelict houses and reiterated spoken memories
convey the heartbreak of extending the M11, while
Jocelyn Pook's score grew from drones to lyrical
elegy. By deftly using Steve Reich's device of
turning speech fragments into melody, the soundtrack
provided an essential link between film and music
and helped make a focused, integrated piece of
work."
Robert Maycock,
The Independent 10/1/97
"Pook's score for the film
uses the rhythms and melodies of the documentary
voices to create flowing, humane music..."
John L Walters,
Gramophone
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