‘Such a morning it is,’ wrote Laurie Lee – and this album, taking its title from his poem, is rooted in such particular moments of lived experience, capturing that fleeting, introspective British light. Bass-baritone Tristan Hambleton and pianist Simon Lepper create a landscape of songs by Britten, Sally Beamish, Judith Weir, Huw Watkins, Tarik O’Regan, Errollyn Wallen and others, many in first recordings, drawn together by themes of time, loss and uncertain footing. Recorded with a close, inward focus, voice and piano search not for display but for connection – a meditation on being, and on what it means, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s words, ‘to know not how it is with you’.