A musical meditation

'ORCHESTRATIONS': FEATURES 19 GUEST MUSICIANS FROM 10 NATIONS

- Hein Kaiser

It's easy to fall into a trance when you turn this album up and release yourself into its embrace. Each track is different, but there's a journey in Guy Buttery's Orchestrations that, when you close your eyes, takes you into your own world of introspection. It's musical meditation, but it's also release. Breathing. Because it took 12 years to get here.

Orchestrations is an album you will never tire of, because on each listen, you discover new nuances.

It began in a somewhat terrifying moment. In 2012, Buttery found himself standing on stage with the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra. There were 52 musicians.

"Before that, the biggest group I'd worked with was a four-piece band," he said.

"Being in front of an orchestra was daunting. But it was also the beginning of something completely new."

That became Orchestrations, an album unlike anything he had made before.

From the first rehearsal, Buttery said he could feel the music shape shifting.

His solo acoustic guitar compositions were suddenly transformed, given wings and expanse, reinterpreted through layers of orchestral texture.

"There were so many more sounds, more octaves, more dynamics to work with," he said. "It opened up this huge creative space."