Eleanor Alberga Essentials

It was while she was studying at the Jamaican School of Music that composer Eleanor Alberga fell in love with the music of Prokofiev, Messiaen and Bartók. These three composers were to have huge impacts on her music, whether from a textural, melodic or rhythmical point of view. There are undoubted 20th-century Russian and Eastern European influences in her many orchestral and chamber works, especially the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the String Quartet No. 1. Listen carefully, and you can also hear the playful rhythms of her Jamaican homeland stitched into the music’s DNA. Here you can enjoy a cross-section of Eleanor Alberga’s soundworld, from the majestic and poignant to the beautiful and playful.