In a long and distinguished career, Piers Hellawell has produced a body of work characterized by boundless invention, genuine discovery and deep integrity. Here, with his second release on Delphian, his enduring creative partnerships – forged through nearly 40 years of composing – are reflected in music that combines arresting surface gestures and sounds with a powerful underlying vision, resulting in pieces that both encourage and reward repeated hearings. Piers Hellawell was born in England and studied at Oxford University, but was appointed when 24 to a composition post at The Queen’s University of Belfast, where, since 2002, he has been Professor of Composition. His family home is in Northern Scotland; his sixty or so published works owe their genesis to that working environment. Working away from England through his career has encouraged Hellawell’s detached attitude to centralized musical fashions; in his teaching and writing about music, as in composition, he advocates traditional training as a platform for individuality, and expresses an aversion to obvious solutions.