With this debut album, cellist Julia MacLaine expresses both her roots in classical music and her enthusiasm for contemporary music by creating a dialogue between Bach's preludes and responses crafted by six Canadian composers with styles as diverse as they are rich: Airat Ichmouratov, Gabriel Dharmoo, Carmen Braden, Nicole Lizée, Cris Derksen and Roy Johnstone.

Assistant principal cello of the National Arts Centre Orchestra since 2014, Julia MacLaine performs worldwide as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician in music ranging from classical to contemporary and from “world” to her own arrangements and compositions. When not onstage with NACO, she performs regularly with her string quartet, Ironwood. Their programs combine classical warhorses (Beethoven, Ravel, Debussy) with very new music (works by Ana Sokolovic, Nicole Lizée, Bryce Dessner, Philip Glass, Esa‐Pekka Salonen) and occasionally veer off into their own arrangements of original songs and folk music.