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Music, Food and Love captures the sounds of flautist come chef Yue’s childhood in simple, spacey arrangements, some with the backdrop of the strings section from the Hungarian Secret Sound Orchestra.

These strings don’t kick in until the third track on the album, and add depth and a different flow to Yue’s melodies, and the album ebbs and flows, swells and retreats, bending its instruments through a stylistically varied album just as Yue bends the notes on his flutes.

The youngest son of a violinist, in a large, musical family in Beijing, Guo Yue grew into the family tradition as a bamboo flute soloist (he plays a rather astonishing fifteen types) and composer. The Chinese musical element in his latest album is complemented and augmented by the Budapest orchestra’s identifiably Eastern European strains, and some more rather Western arrangements, which neatly tie in with an album that was recorded in Beijing, Bath and Budapest.

A true polymath, Yue is also writer and specialist in Chinese cookery, and the release of Music, Food and Love coincides with that of his memoirs/cookery book (of the same title), and tracks on the album relate directly to events mentioned in the book, so if you want the full experience you can eat the food, read the book and immerse yourself in this intriguing album.

Music, Food and Love is released on Realworld and the memoirs are published by Portrait.

Link: www.realworldrecords.com/guoyue

Guo Yue will be appearing at WOMAD Cacares on 10 May, and at Abergavenny Food Festival on 16 September.