Rufus Wainwright does Shakespeare!

Rufus Wainwright is now recording on Deutsche Grammophon, and he is exploring classical sounds. His last CD was a complete original opera that he wrote, and this new CD is a celebration of Shakespeare sonnets. Entitled Take All My Loves - 9 Shakespeare Sonnets, Wainwright has enlisted the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin String Section and a wide variety of guest singers and actors: including soprano Anna Prohaska, rock star Florence Welch, and actors Helena Bonham Carter and William Shatner.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets in all, and as a youngster Wainwright was encouraged by his mother to read them all, but it wasn't until later when he was asked to write music for an evening of sonnets presented by Robert Wilson and the Berliner Ensemble, that he became enamoured of them. He said: "My mother Kate McGarrigle, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was falling in love with my partner Jorn, and I was in the process of coneiving the conception of my daughter Viva. What a belssing to have the sonnets to hold onto during that time. Love, death, birth, happiness, regret etc,... it was all there."