Ange Halliwell is a French musician who has been creating beautiful and heartfelt music with his harp and computers for years, and whose universe is rare and truly special. One in a million. After several EPs and singles, he released The Wheel Of Time, a magnificent collection of musical pieces that shaped his debut album in 2020: “It's about the seasons, the passage of time and all the emotions you can go through, day and night, and those moments in between, a moment of reconnection.” He first played the harp at the age of 12. From the green countryside of southwest France, he composes music that combines hypnotic arpeggios, layers of sound and voices sometimes sung, spoken or shouted. Halliwell belongs to a new international group of artists who are rethinking harp music in the contemporary field, among them Joanna Newson, Active Child and Nala Sinephro.
His history and, therefore, his work are intimately linked to nature. His music is a product of both classical and contemporary manifestations, a unique scope and an uncomplicated sensibility. Halliwell's latest album, Lullaby For The Dead, is marked by the reiteration of a type of song, the lullaby. Typical of a song to literally lull a child to sleep, Halliwell directs her lullabies to the infinite sleepers. Leaning less towards the genre impulses into which the harp slips, each of the songs provides a distinct and contemplative soundtrack for different stages of hope and grief. Ange calls each piece “a prayer,” they are “a tribute to these invisible worlds and these emotions that overwhelm us all at some point in our lives.” And she sings: “Fly, fly beautiful soul! The beyond awaits you...”
“You can't take a picture of this, it's already gone,” Nate says to his sister Claire as she is about to leave Los Angeles for a new life. Well, it was Nate's ghost or whatever you want to call it. It's a scene from the latest episode of the series Six Feet Under, possibly the best fictional approach we've witnessed in the last 20 years. We are so far away and yet so close to death, it's a sign of our modern civilisation. But then again, art is one of the most powerful tools we have to understand that our path in life will end the same way for everyone. And to help us ease the pain of losing our loved ones Lullaby For The Dead certainly creates a space for a ritual for oneself, in which to honour our feelings of loss driven by the power of music. We speak to Halliwell about his new album, living in the countryside, collaborating with other artists and his first steps as a musician.
