Australian/American soprano Jane Sheldon is, in her words, a “vocal performer and composer of exploratory chamber music”. This describes perfectly an artist renowned internationally for consistently high-quality work that develops and expands possibilities for contemporary opera and vocal art music. 

Her latest recording comprises settings of seven texts from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours (1899-1903), a three-part volume of mystical poetry named in reference to medieval manuals of private devotion. Sheldon has composed and arranged these works as vocal duets and performs both parts, which are layered in the recording process. These in turn are interwoven with recordings of gongs, highly resonant instruments that produce texturally complex timbres, overtones and layers of sound. Subtly manipulated with electronics – often barely noticeably – they form hypnotic, minimalist ‘gongscapes’ for each work. 

It’s conceptually brilliant for Rilke’s subject matter. Take, for instance, this excerpt from My life is not this steep hour: “I am the space between two notes / which, if wed, ring crossly / for the death note craves finality. But in their dark interval the two...