NOVA Chamber Choir's fourth recording, HUMAN / NATURE, explores the complex relationship between humans and nature, the nature within us and the nature surrounding us. Several of the pieces are recorded for the very first time, including a commission by NOVA.

One of the constants of human nature seems to be pondering our relationship with nature: from Aristotle declaring that we are "rational animals", Descartes separating our natural, material bodies from our God-like, immaterial, thinking minds, to Darwin mapping a direct line from the apes to us - from animal to animal - nature to nature. Our concept of nature has often been reduced to an antithesis of the human, as reflected in this much cited definition of nature from The Oxford English Dictionary: "The phenomena of the physical world collectively; esp. plants, animals, and other features and products of the Earth itself, as opposed to humans and human creations". Recently, sparked by the discourse of ecocriticism and environmentalism, this anthropocentric view of nature has been unmasked; we are nature, and failing to realise this is exactly what has led to a nature in crisis - and thereby, a crisis for humankind.

Complex and turbulent as this relation between HUMAN and NATURE has been and continues to be, nature and man's place in it is one of the most beloved fields of exploration for artists; whether it be romantic poets voicing their emotions in the "rustle and shiver" of treetops, as in Fanny Hensel's setting of Joseph von Eichendorff, or contemporary composers taking direct inspiration from natural sounds and landscapes, like in the pieces by Aftab Darvishi and Birgit Djupedal. In daring to bridge this gap between HUMAN and NATURE, new possibilities come to light: our humanity can encompass our nature, and help us tend to nature with humanity.