music
Cantabile
Signum
Signum Records SIGCD055
Dankworth

22.   Our Revels Now Are Ended

John Dankworth (b. 1927) / William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Arranged by Cantabile

1960s album. From John's superlative album (sung of course by Cleo Laine) Shakespeare and All that Jazz (1964) and Wordsongs (1987). Under the auspices of their Wavendon Allmusic award scheme, John and Cleo gave Cantabile a prize, presented by Princess Margaret, for breaking down musical barriers. This is a very sexy song with, as one might expect, spectacular jazz harmonies embellishing Prospero's speech from The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1.

The music is in Wordsongs (published 1979). We sing another of these pieces: The Compleat Works (written in 1964) on our album From Madrigal to McCartney; we first came across these pieces when we took part in Julia Migenes' ground-breaking Channel 4 series, Julia!.