The Painter’s Mistress
Canzona
The Ballad of Mr & Mrs Discobbolos
Ten Types of Hospital Visitor
Songs of a Childhood

When Nicky Spence was first shown the score to ‘The Boy in the Train’, the last of Buxton Orr’s Songs of a Childhood, he was transported to the late 1980s – his own childhood in Scotland. ‘Something about Buxton’s sense of humour, excitement and honesty resonated with me,’ Spence says, ‘and fed my desire to discover more about his work. On contacting his widow, I was led to a treasure trove of unrecorded works for voice.’ Sometimes thrillingly complex and always beautiful, and given character and verve by Orr’s delightful setting of the Scots language, this rich body of work has finally found a worthy modern-day advocate. In his sensitive and intelligent curating of this programme, Spence has brought together artists from Delphian’s roster – pianist Iain Burnside and members of the Edinburgh Quartet enjoy themselves in music that is firmly ‘home ground’.

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Recorded on 18-22 April 2016 at CREAR, Argyll