EPK: Leo Chadburn, Phaedra Ensemble, English Dancing Master (Album)

Artist: Leo Chadburn, Phaedra Ensemble
Title: English Dancing Master
Release Date: 30th October 2026
Format: CD, Bandcamp and All Streaming Services (distributed by AWAL / The Orchard)
Genre: Experimental / Modern Classical / Spoken Word
Label: Library of Nothing

ENGLISH DANCING MASTER : Cover Art

STREAMING AUDIO (Bandcamp)

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The album is also available on Bandcamp, and across all streaming services.

PRESS RELEASE

The dancing that we do with our bodies; the dancing that we do with our minds. Like a ruptured radio documentary, a voice conjures a string quartet to explore these two notions: kinetic expression and free association. Twenty fragmentary scenarios move through place and time with chaotic energy, alternately serene, sinister and absurd.

A collaboration between Phaedra Ensemble and composer Leo Chadburn, reflecting their ongoing artistic relationship and shared exploratory approach to music and voice, English Dancing Master touches on themes including human and animal locomotion, the popularisation of the drum machine, the movement of particles and glaciers, mediaeval “dancing plagues”, ballroom dancing and drag performance in Blackpool, legendary London clubs now demolished and illegal raves in the 1990s. Dancing as political act; dancing as cathartic release.

The title is stolen from a collection of country dance melodies, originally published in 1651, but English Dancing Master is otherwise a wholly original collision of words, styles and ideas.

Click here for a .PDF copy of the CD liner notes - contains full texts/lyrics and album credits.

Click here for a hi-res image of the album cover (6000px).

ALBUM CREDITS

The making of English Dancing Master was supported by The Hinrichsen Foundation and Vaughan Williams Foundation.

BIOGRAPHIES

For more information / full biographies:
www.leochadburn.com | www.phaedraensemble.com/about

Leo Chadburn's previous solo albums have twice been included in Bandcamp Daily's top ten contemporary classical releases of the year (2021 and 2024). His 2025 album was Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator, a deeply atmospheric meditation on landscape, memory, industry and language.

"...Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is a perfectly realised work, and visionary triumph." —The Quietus albums of the year list, 2025

Leo was known previously by the pseudonym Simon Bookish and released a sequence of subversive “avant-pop” albums, alongside remixes for artists including Owen Pallett, Grizzly Bear and Serafina Steer.

Phaedra Ensemble has appeared at venues and festivals including the Barbican Centre, Southbank Centre, and Royal Opera House, with multiple broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, France Musique, VRT and dublab. Working with flexible forces ranging from string quartet to larger mixed ensembles, recent work has included retrospectives of the music of Steve Reich and John Adams, and a national tour celebrating Gavin Bryars at 80.

In September 2026, Phaedra releases Realms, its debut album for Cantaloupe Music, created in close collaboration with the legendary composer, performer and vocalist Meredith Monk.

PRESS QUOTES

"...Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is a perfectly realised work, and visionary triumph."
—Tom Bolton, The Quietus Albums of the Year 2025

CATALOGUE

Previous releases on Library of Nothing Records: