Sweeney William - William Sweeney: Tree O' Licht

Facts Both musically impassioned and socially engaged, William Sweeney's music is at it's most eloquent when voiced by that most human of instruments, the cello. The player navigates a stormy electronic landscape in the Borges-inspired the Poet Tells of his Fame, while Schumann lies behind the powerfully argued Sonata for Cello and Piano, recipient of a 2011 BASCA British Composer Award. The Sonata bears a joint dedication to Delphian artist Robert Irvine and to Erkki Lahesmaa - "keepers," as Sweeney calls them, "of the cello's inner voice." Irvine is joined by his Finnish colleague here in the 2008 duo the Tree o' Licht, in which Gaelic psalmody is transmuted into deepest instrumental expressivity.