Lucie Horsch Announces New Folk-Inspired Album - From Bartok and Stravinsky to Piazzolla and Charly Parker

“Folk music, for me, is music that doesn’t easily reveal its origins… This is music that feels like it has been around forever, even though it had to start somewhere.” – Lucie Horsch

The sounds on Lucie Horsch’s new album Origins feel both modern and eternal at the same time, seeming to take inspiration from every corner of the planet.

A high-octane re-working of Charlie Parker’s bebop masterpiece Ornitholgy opens the record in style before listeners are guided though new arrangements exploring traditional music from Ireland to Senegal. Folk-inspired compositions of 20th century modernists like Igor Stravinsky, Sir Peter Maxwell-Davies, Bela Bartok, Isang Yun and Claude Debussy are heard alongside pieces by Heraclio Fenandéz and Astor Piazzolla, deeply rooted in the folk traditions of Latin America, from Argentinian tango to Venezuelan joropo.

Around the world, audience members have often approached Horsch after her concerts to show her their own countries’ traditional instruments, experiences she says inspired this album.

“Someone came to me after a concert I gave in Corsica with a traditional pifana, made from a goat’s horn…. People in Japan and Canada also asked me to try local recorder-like folk instruments. That gave me the idea for Origins.” – Lucie Horsch

With a new understanding of her instrument and its folk roots, Horsch worked closely with an illustrious team of arrangers, feeding them detailed insights on the recorder technique and tone colours. Composer Max Knigge, Rob Horsting, co-conductor and chief arranger of the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, and double-bassist and arranger Marijn van Prooijen have all contributed to a dazzling set or arrangements showcasing Horsch’s musicality. Horsch plays eight of recorders, opting for both renaissance, baroque and modern instruments to deliver effects she describes as ranging from “steely purity” to “tonal richness and technical facility”. Horsch is joined by a variety of supporting musicians, including the trailblazing genre-bending collective Fuse Ensemble, a quintet from the GRAMMY Award-winning Dutch Orchestra LUDWIG; acclaimed Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe; bandoneonist Carel Kraayenhof and Kora player Bao Sissoko.

At the age of nine, the prodigy Lucie Horsch became a national sensation in her native Netherlands with a televised performance of Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 captured public imagination. In the years since, Horsch has become a passionate and charismatic advocate of her instrument, recognised as both a stylish baroque interpreter and a versatile, genre-defying musical mind immersed in a range of styles. She is an exclusive Decca Classics recording artist, with her two albums to date receiving glowing acclaim.

Lucie Horsch’s debut album featuring concertos and other works by Vivaldi received the 2017 Edison Klassiek Award. Her second album Baroque Journey, recorded with the Academy of Ancient Music and Thomas Dunford, featuring works by Sammartini, Bach, Marin Marais and Händel among others reached the No. 1 in the UK Classical Charts and was awarded the prestigious OPUS KLASSIK prize in Germany in 2019. For the complete Deutsche Grammophon edition of Leonard Bernstein the composer, Lucie made the world premiere recording of ‘Variations on an Octatonic Scale’ together with cellist Kian Soltani.