IN BETWEEN is a reflection of the artistic path I have chosen: music (CD) and photography (DVD) telling a tale. You might think the choice of music on this recording to be a little eclectic. Indeed it is. I like the luxury of creating my own musical story, centering an evening on a theme or the place we perform in. The process often begins with one or two songs which mesmerise me to the extent that I have to find an excuse to perform them, and so I begin by weaving a tale around them, telling a musical story. Hence the unusual combinations of styles, composers, musical periods, geographical origins, rhythms, stories and lyrics. Some years ago I started working with London based photographer Gareth Davies. His photography became another source of inspiration for this recording, illustrating the musical tale and making it more accessible for the audience. More senses to use, more directions to follow. Music and photography mirror each other, visualising the musical score’s rhythm, tempo and pitch and bringing sound from the melodies and harmonies of the imagery to the musical performance. The message is IN BETWEEN, in more ways than one: Dancing between worlds | The songs of Golijov, Piazzolla and Villa Lobos float between being rooted in South America and at the same time being informed by the composers’ European heritage, musical education and ancestry. This is beautifully mirrored by Gareth Davies’ images of a street procession and dancers of different cultures in the midst of London. Reality or imagination | Something on the lines of Händel’s opera Giulio Cesare gives apparent prominence to the great Roman but the real star of the show is Cleopatra. She who seductively exploits her charms is also a cunning politician, winning over the hearts and ears of the audience in the musical world. In our original performance we used images of myself in the background whilst singing in front of the audience, throwing up the tension between remote history and contemporary interpretation. We see only a part, but fancy that we have grasped the whole | The original idea came from the fact that Frank Bridge chooses only part of a poem for his settings in the Three Songs and thus reduces them to the eternal themes of life - love, longing, loss, farewell and death. All things belong to a greater context. Taking them out of context alters their meaning and at the same time might harmonise them into one theme. We zoom into panoramic images, we discover their substance, before looking from afar again. Mesmerising | The repetition in the themes, sounds, rhythms and musical structure of the contemporary Spanish, Arabic and Sephardic songs by García Abril, Ben-Haim and Hemsi mesmerise the listener and create an almost meditative sensation. The photographic technique used – slitscan – mirrors this by building up fragments of space over time to create an oscillating image of the object observed, forever repetitive. Besides the artistic IN BETWEEN this recording also reflects my private IN BETWEEN. I am a singer but I also manage satellite missions. I live between different countries and languages. Home is a distributed term. Nothing is one or the other with a square definition. I believe that these sides of me enrich each other by being rather different. I pursue them all with dedication and passion, energy and enthusiasm. I had the privilege of working with exceptionally skilled and joyful musicians and excellent producers – my thanks to William Hancox (piano), Andriy Viytovych (viola) and Benjamin Ferguson (organ), as well as to Simon Weir and Morgan Roberts from Classical Media.