Sarah Maria Sun | soprano; Oscar Strasnoy | piano and Rhodes Samuel Blaser | trombone; Mathieu Ogier | 78 RPM and modular synths Rebecca Lenton | flute and piccolo; Theo Nabicht | clarinet and bass-clarinet Kirstin Maria Pientka | alto; Cosima Gerhardt | violoncello; Manon Pierrhumbert | harp; Pascal Viglino | percussion; Guillaume Vairet | percussion

Taking Berio's Folk Songs as its point of departure, Work Songs (2019) draws on three distinct American traditions: early country music, Cajun balladry from Louisiana, and the prison work songs recorded by John and Alan Lomax in the Mississippi penitentiary system. Blaser replaces studied harmonic simplicity with accompaniment of glorious complexity, adding trombone, piano, and field recordings to Berio's original instrumentation.

The result honors its sources while utterly transforming them, placing Lead Belly, Blind Uncle Gaspard, and the singers of Parchman Farm inside a tonal world that is at once faithful and disorienting. Bold homage and bold reinvention, in equal measure.