All of Us Luke Howard

• Luke Howard (b. 1978):
• 1Critical Spirit04:51
• 2A Different Idea of Love03:55
• 3A World of Abstractions01:05
• 4An Hour Off for Friendship03:48
• 5The Compass of a Telegraph01:29
• 6The Closing of the Gates06:02
• 7The Opening of the Gates04:59
• 8The Moment Only01:34
• 9The Vast Indifference of the Sky05:19
• 10I Was Very Fond of You, But Now I'm So Tired01:38
• 11A Language Forgotten04:04
• 12A Faint Qualm for the Future02:41
• 13The End of the First Period02:42
• 14Interlude00:55
• 15A Collective Destiny04:22
• Total Runtime49:24

Info for All of Us

"All Of Us" is not only an exquisite portrait of isolation, loss, resistance and reconciliation in both stark and rich shades of piano, orchestra and electronics, but the theme of quarantine provides a framework for the record. In this strange, unsettling and unexpected world, he found himself turning to French novelist Albert Camus’ classic absurdist novel The Plague, written in 1947, in which the prescient saga of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran was an existential allegory for humanity’s vulnerability and inability to control its own destiny.

Throughout the album, Howard shifts between subtle permutations of shifting sound, etched with his trademark intimacy and restraint, and applied with a palate both minimalist and expansive; to his own piano, celeste and synthesiser, the Budapest Art Orchestra (conducted by Peter Pejtsik) plays strings, guests added flugelhorn, viola, contrabass and modular synth whilst fellow post-classicist Ben Lukas Boysen provides additional programming, production and mixing on ‘Critical Spirit’ and ‘The Opening Of The Gates’.

The uncanny alliance between beauty of the music and its uneasy tension is exemplified by the first single to be lifted from "All Of Us", ‘The Opening Of The Gates’: a quiet flurry of low-tone pulses and synth loops beneath Howard’s piano imagining the feeling of anticipation and nervousness as quarantine is finally lifted in Oran.

Eight years on from the release of his compelling debut album "Sun, Cloud", Luke Howard has now established himself as one of the most important and exciting musicians in contemporary classical music. The composer has been at the forefront of opening up piano music to a new generation, while challenging the notion of what can be achieved in the form. He has twice been nominated for the Australian Music Prize. His 2019 work ‘Beating Heart Stories’ featured stunning reworkings of his acclaimed album ‘Open Heart Story’. The same year, Howard’s first film soundtrack ‘The Sand That Ate The Sea’ for director Matthew Thorne’s documentary about the Australian outback was nominated for Best Soundtrack at the ARIA Awards. He has worked on ballets with The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden and Atlanta Ballet. As well as his solo music, he leads The Luke Howard Trio and has made albums with jazz bassist Janos Bruneel and Grammy-winning trumpeter Nadje Noordhuis. Luke’s most recent album 2020’s ‘All That Is Not Solid’ represented his most audacious and exciting album to date. It documented four concerts played in January of wholly improvised music, highlighting his breath-taking melodic talent.

Luke Howard

Luke Howard
studied classical piano as a child before graduating with honours from the Victorian College of the Arts. He was twice a finalist in the Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition and has written music for both film and theatre.

In recent years Luke has opened for Benjamin Clementine and Ben Frost, and performed with artists as diverse as Lior and Jeff Mills. His music has been described as “totally sublime” (Headphone Commute, February 2014), “absolutely heavenly” (Mary Anne Hobbs, July 2013), and “cinematic in its approach” (The Age, October 2009).

Luke divides his time between Europe and Australia. In 2013 he released the Australian Music Prize long-listed record Sun, Cloud. Luke’s score to Where Do Lilacs Come From won Best Music for a Short Film at the 2014 APRA/AMCOS Screen Music Awards. His second solo album, Two Places, was released in April 2016.

This album contains no booklet.