Cassandra Miller’s Chanter (2024) makes its US debut on 6 December at California Institute of the Arts. The 20-minute work for concerto for guitar and strings will be performed by Primož Sukic and the CalArts Faculty Ensemble conducted by Nicholas Deyoe.
Chanter is cast in four verses and a coda, played continuously: ‘Rippling’, ‘Bellow-breathing’, ‘Sleep-chanting’, ‘Slowing Air’ and a Coda, ‘Honey-dreaming’. The work is inspired by Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul, whose live performance of O Chiadain an Lo, recorded in Sligachan on the Isle of Skye, provided a key musical prompt for much of the work’s material and atmosphere. Though the original melody is from 1784, Chaimbeul arranged it for the small-pipes and transposed it into the Dorian mode.
Chanter was premiered by Sean Shibe with Dunedin Consort in April 2024, with subsequent appearances at the Cheltenham Festival and De Bijloke, Ghent. In November 2024 Shibe toured the concerto with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Richard Tognetti. It 2025 it was shortlisted for a Royal Philharmonic Society award and a Classical Ivor. Shibe returns to the work with Royal Northern Sinfonia, led by Maria Włoszczowska, at the Glasshouse on 15 February.
Creating Chanter saw Shibe join in Miller’s process of ‘automatic singing’. One afternoon in her apartment Shibe sang along to Chaimbeul’s track; he then sang along to his own recorded voice over and over, reclining on the sofa, until he was somewhere between sleep and waking: “sleep-chanting”, in Miller’s words. From this Miller created a warbling, folk-like, sighing mantra, repeated by the guitar until it reaches a dreamlike landscape – all the while carried by the string ensemble’s rippling, lulling, and rocking. Miller discusses creating the work in The Guardian here.
The title of the piece refers to the part of the bagpipes on which the melody is played, often with many evocative and heartbreaking ornaments, with Miller especially captivated by the finger vibrato: “waving the finger in the air to make a ‘timbral trill’”, Miller says, “drawing attention (as moth-wings to light) to that moment (or flight-path) of the melodic line”. Sometimes Chaimbeul’s original melody peaks through in the string ensemble, “as occasional shafts of richly-coloured light.”