Mathew Adkins, Terri Hron

Lépidoptères holds a single work in five movements, Lepidoptera, composed in 2014-15 by Monty Adkins and recorder player Terri Hron. It began during Hron’s summer 2014 residency at the Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) of the University of Huddersfield and was completed in Montréal. Each movement is named after a family of insects, and the composers compare the recorder, with its changing colours, to the metamorphosis from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. The album was a finalist for the Prix Opus 2015-16 album of the year.

All the sounds of the electronic part come from recorders between C-bass and G-alto in a consort built by Adriana Breukink after instruments by Schnitzer from the turn of the 16th century. The movements are retuned and reconfigured for each performance. In Saturniid the recorder rides a wave of fixed sound, sometimes submerged, sometimes above it. Ephemeroptera sets the solo instrument against a delicate fixed environment, while Zygoptera and Anisoptera feed a stream of sound files from an algorithmic mobile into live processing. The central Lepidoptera combines these approaches and received an Honorable Mention at Musica Nova 2014.

Hron’s parts were recorded at McGill University in January 2015 by Will Howie, as part of his doctoral research on 3D recording, first in eight channels and then mixed to stereo, and mastered by Dominique Bassal.

Born in Leamington in 1972, Adkins teaches experimental electronic music at the University of Huddersfield and studied with Jonty Harrison in Birmingham. Hron, born in Edmonton in 1977, studied recorder and Carnatic improvisation in Amsterdam and electroacoustic composition at the Université de Montréal.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 16136, 2016.