David Russell
David Russell’s countertenor cuts cleanly through Mozart’s scatological canons with The Song Company, and he takes the solo line in Martin Wesley-Smith’s Who Killed Cock Robin?, turning the falsely accused caterpillar into a soft-shoe turn of real charm.
On Mozart Unexpurgated he joins the ensemble for the composer’s rude canons and songs, the kind of party music that thrives on nimble high male voice and quick comic attack. The same clarity serves the environmental programme of The Green CD, where Wesley-Smith’s nursery-rhyme inquest moves from parlour ballad and barbershop to fierce dissonance; Russell’s caterpillar number is the sly centrepiece, a goofy waltz and soft-shoe that still lands the chemical punchline. His contribution is pure ensemble singing with a soloist’s spark: light, pointed, and ready for both the joke and the sting.
David Russell appears on
An Australian Collection
Nineteen tracks drawn from the Tall Poppies catalogue, chosen to show the range and depth of Australian composition and performance across the label’s first decade.
The Green CD
In a climate of rising concern for the planet, this programme of Australian choral works turns on nature and protest. Wesley-Smith's Who Killed Cock Robin? stands as a landmark of Australian choral writing, and one of its most popular.
Mozart Unexpurgated
The Song Company sings Mozart’s scatological canons and songs, with fortepianist Geoffrey Lancaster improvising the accompaniments and taking two irreverent solo turns.
Other credits
The Ockeghem Legacy
A celebration of Ockeghem’s life and work. His death prompted many elegies, the most famous being Josquin’s Nimphes des bois. Every composer on this disc is said to have been present at his funeral in 1497.