ALBUM REVIEW: Michael Price – Whitsun

The Control Room

Released: 12.08.22

Michael Price is an Emmy-award winning soundtrack composer with several piano and orchestral albums released over the last decade or so, and if they’re up to Whitsun’s standard, they must be worth hearing. Whitsun is an evocation of his Yorkshire childhood through piano and some sparsely-used accompaniments: voice, trumpet and a recreation of brass bands with a vintage Yamaha CS80.

These ten tracks are suffused by nostalgia, memory and loss (literally, in this case) and have at their heart Price’s limpid, gentle piano work, recorded to capture that school assembly sound. Even the track titles – The First Touch Of Water, The Stream Shines Silver – add to the meditative, melancholy mood. If sweet, aching sadness is your thing, you’ll want to hear this.