Newly released album “For cello. By cellists” (Delphian) features a series of new commissions for the instrument, curated and performed by virtuosos cellist Ben Michaels.
Here’s what the Gramophone had to say about “Inila”, Zoë’s contribution to the album:
Zoë Martlew’s “Inila” skirts around its acoustic margins and and interstices. Inspired by the composer’s trip to Effigy Mounds in Iowa – an ancient site filled with mysterious animal-shaped earth mounds – the work’s title means ‘quiet’ in the Lakȟótiyapi (Lakota) language. Inila captures the primordial essence of the Effigy Mounds by digging deep into the cello’s own timbral archaeology and uncovering hidden layers, its breath-like whispers and airy panpipe-like melodies hovering above the site’s holy ground like sacred shadow spirits.
– Pwyll ap Sion
In the Gramophone’s “One to Watch”:
Zoë Martlew’s “Inila”, exploring the cellist’s own relationship to the instrument and abandoning traditional “bow on string” playing altogether.”
Gramophone review “Hôtel Babylon”