Nature and landscape have been the dominant themes of much of Rhian Samuel’s vocal music of the last ten years, projected chiefly through the poetry of Anne Stevenson, and in her most recent song-settings, the writings of the Pakistan-born Texas-based poet Zulfikar Ghose. His poem ‘Conspiracy of the Clouds’ describes how, the clouds having chosen to become invisible, ‘Even the astronauts on the space shuttle / looked down on a cloudless America’ as hurricanes ravage Louisiana and storms engulf N...