The Soul Rests Eternal

These fourteen new works for solo cello and orchestra take the listener on a journey exploring the emotional landscape of grief, bereavement and loss, but also hope, optimism and a celebration of life and human relationships. The music reflects the composer’s personal journey when confronted with the prospect of his own mortality at exactly the moment when a close family member was losing his battle with cancer half a world away. Seen through the twin perspectives of the composer’s standpoint and from a more general, global view, the music is suffused with a sense of love, warmth and hope; the album takes an emotional journey through the everyday – from the immediate to the eternal; the banal to the sublime. It is a reflection of lives lived, however well, however long or briefly – the emotional perspectives range from a mother’s lullaby to an elegy for a lost son; from a celebration of a life ripped from us whilst still rippling with vitality, to a sad yet graceful acceptance of the dying of the light. The impetus for the album came when Mike Sheppard was taken seriously ill in January 2009, and came within hours of dying. Until then a successful musician, then music publisher with his own publishing and production company, he took a hard look at his life and questioned why he hadn’t pursued his real musical passion – composing. He resolved that, if he saw the next day, composing would be his first and only occupation, and this album is the first result of that decision.