Eden Lonsdale: Dawnings

British/German composer Eden Lonsdale was born in 1996. When he was nine, he started making music with his cousin of the same age. When he was 12, he started enjoying playing the cello which he had been learning since he was 9. From then on, he spent weekends listening to Bach while following along with the score. Soon after that, he started composing a lot. It was not long until Lonsdale was studying composition at the Guildhall School of Music in London with Malcolm Singer, Cassandra Miller and Julian Anderson-Bowes and others; he also studied composition at the Kunstuniversität Graz, Austria, with Klaus Lang. Records show that in 2018 he composed four pieces, the number rising year on year until 2022, after which he was composing about twelve pieces a year.

In 2023, Lonsdale's first album, Clear and Hazy Moons (review here), was released by Another Timbre. Its four tracks had been recorded the previous year, three by Apartment House and the fourth by Rothko Collective; three of the pieces, including the latter, had been composed in 2022, while the fourth, "Oasis," dated from 2021, and was the last piece Lonsdale wrote as a student.

Lonsdale's second album, Ricercari for Rainy Days was released on Kory Reader's Sawyer Editions label in June 2024. Credited to Eden Lonsdale/red panel, it featured three Lonsdale compositions, two written in 2019 and the third in 2022; the ensemble red panel comprises Cara Dawson on harp, Patrick Hegarty on percussion, Forrest Moody on harmonium, and Lonsdale on cello and/or electronics—the only time Lonsdale has been recorded playing one or more instruments.

Dawnings is very different to the two albums which preceded it. The double-disc album was originally going to be centered around three pieces, "Aurora," "Cloud Symmetries" and "Shedding," which were composed for specified numbers of particular string instruments, one cello, four violins and seven violas respectively. With the pieces playing for 12:21, 34:15, and 26:00, Lonsdale was brave and honest enough to say that it all ended up sounding a bit monotonous. His remedy was to intersperse the three pieces for strings with two mixed ensembles, "Dawnings," a clarinet and piano duo played by Apartment House's Heather Roche and Kerry Yong, and "Constellations," a mixed nonet played by the Netherlands-based ensemble Oerknal, conducted by Hardy Li.

This means that the first disc features three pieces played by Apartment House while the second disc features one played by Oerknal and one by Ensemble IPSE, the seven violas piece. Irrespective of who is playing what on each disc, Lonsdale's music is recognizable from start to finish and is gentle on the ear throughout. Despite Lonsdale's view that the three string instrument pieces sounded monotonous, repeated listening refutes that. Those repeated listenings are repaid. On this evidence, it is not difficult to hear why his music is being increasingly acclaimed, performed and commissioned.

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