Wishing Tree
The Gesualdo Six & Owain Park
Released on 5 June 2026 as their eleventh album for Hyperion Records, Wishing Tree marks a departure for The Gesualdo Six in that it draws on secular repertoire the ensemble has been performing live since their founding in 2015 — material they had never before committed to a studio recording. The programme is built around interconnected themes of nature, memory, longing, and childhood innocence, weaving together Renaissance madrigals, contemporary choral works, and reimaginings of traditional British and Irish folk songs. It opens with William Byrd's "This sweet and merry month of May" and travels through folk arrangements including "Bushes and Briars" (arr. Vaughan Williams), "The Oak and the Ash," "The Lark in the Clear Air," and "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose," alongside newly commissioned and recent works by composers such as David Bednall, Alison Willis, and Christen Taylor Holmes.
The album's title and emotional centre is Joby Talbot's The Wishing Tree, a vivid 2002 setting of a poem by Kathleen Jamie in which syllables are passed between voices over an irregular rhythmic ostinato — a technique Talbot describes as evoking "perpetual yearning." The programme also includes Renaissance polyphony by Josquin des Prez, Arcadelt, and Gibbons, and closes with Poulenc's Petites voix, a cycle of six children's songs that reinforces the album's thread of innocence and play. As director Owain Park frames it, Wishing Tree is "a journey through time, poetry and song, rooted in tradition yet alive with contemporary expression" — a description that captures the group's characteristic ease in moving between centuries without the seams showing.
Wishing Tree
The Gesualdo Six & Owain Park
Released on 5 June 2026 as their eleventh album for Hyperion Records, Wishing Tree marks a departure for The Gesualdo Six in that it draws on secular repertoire the ensemble has been performing live since their founding in 2015 — material they had never before committed to a studio recording. The programme is built around interconnected themes of nature, memory, longing, and childhood innocence, weaving together Renaissance madrigals, contemporary choral works, and reimaginings of traditional British and Irish folk songs. It opens with William Byrd's "This sweet and merry month of May" and travels through folk arrangements including "Bushes and Briars" (arr. Vaughan Williams), "The Oak and the Ash," "The Lark in the Clear Air," and "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose," alongside newly commissioned and recent works by composers such as David Bednall, Alison Willis, and Christen Taylor Holmes.
The album's title and emotional centre is Joby Talbot's The Wishing Tree, a vivid 2002 setting of a poem by Kathleen Jamie in which syllables are passed between voices over an irregular rhythmic ostinato — a technique Talbot describes as evoking "perpetual yearning." The programme also includes Renaissance polyphony by Josquin des Prez, Arcadelt, and Gibbons, and closes with Poulenc's Petites voix, a cycle of six children's songs that reinforces the album's thread of innocence and play. As director Owain Park frames it, Wishing Tree is "a journey through time, poetry and song, rooted in tradition yet alive with contemporary expression" — a description that captures the group's characteristic ease in moving between centuries without the seams showing.