Explaining the unexplainable: a seductive & magical album from Lotte Betts-Dean, Dimitris Soukaras, everything you’ve ever lived on Delphian

everything you’ve ever lived: Baden Powell, Ravel, Seiber, de Falla, Richard Rodgers, Burt Bacharach, My Brightest Diamond, Vincente Asencio, Debussy, Sinead O’Connor, Caroline Polachek, Britten, Asik Veysel, Jorge Cardoso, Paurillo Barroso, Armando Soares; Lotte Betts-Dean, Dimitris Soukaras; Delphian Records
Reviewed 1 October 2025

A mysterious and seductive recital from a voice and guitar duo that moves smoothly and hauntingly through countries, eras and styles to create a little bit of magic

There is a phrase in Megan Stellar’s rather flowery booklet note for mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean’s latest disc which helps to elucidate the rather elusive nature of the programme. “That melange of ambiguity and subconscious understanding lifts alongside Lotte and Dimitris’s interest in harmonic connection and the subtle stories that can be told…“. 

For the disc, everything you’ve ever lived on Delphian Records, Lotte Betts-Dean is joined by guitarist Dimitris Soukaras for a recital which moves effortlessly and nearly seamlessly through Baden Powell, Ravel, Seiber, de Falla, Richard Rodgers, Burt Bacharach, My Brightest Diamond, Vincente Asencio, Debussy, Sinead O’Connor, Caroline Polachek, Britten, Asik Veysel, Jorge Cardoso, Paurillo Barroso and Armando Soares.

The album is described as ‘exploring ideas of nostalgia, childhood memory and the state between waking and sleep‘. Which covers a remarkable amount of ground. What is distinctive for me is not so much the subject matter of the songs as the way one flows into another with hardly a ripple. 

This is not so much a recital of songs as a sequence, lasting just over an hour, that flows smoothly and seductively. And make no bones about it, Betts-Dean’s voice, no matter the subject she is singing about, is wonderfully seductive and beautifully smooth and partnered by Soukaras’ stunning guitar playing. That at least ten of the tracks on the disc are his own arrangements must be to his credit in creating the sense of coherence and flow.

everything you’ve ever lived – Lotte Betts-Dean & Dimitris Soukaras – Delphian Records (Photo: foxbrushfilms.com)

To give you an idea of the effect we move from Canto de Ossanha by the Brazilian composer Baden Powell (his father was a Scouting fan, evidently) to Ravel’s A la maniere de Borodine to a French folk-song arranged by Matyas Seiber to three of de Falla’s popular Spanish songs in arrangements by Miguel Llobet that make the guitar versions seem obvious and ideal. Then we move into Rodgers’ Blue Moon with barely a ripple of disturbance. Later on Debussy’s early Romance, which sounds very un-Debussy-like, is followed by the Sinead O’Connor song Jackie. 

Now, the risk behind a programme like this is that if the popular songs do not chime a chord with the listeners, then the recital threatens to fall flat. Not here. Betts-Dean and Soukaras make each song work on its own terms, you don’t need to know that it is by Sinead O’Connor or even who she is. There are, indeed, people on the album I have never come across before, notably singer-songwriter Shara Nova of band My Brightest Diamond and singer-songwriter Caroline Polachek. 

My Brightest Diamond’s Have you ever seen an angel proves to be a little bit of magic, where Bette-Dean demonstrates her gift for getting in the cracks between genres, really singing the song yet bending the music just as it needs and supported by Soukaras in a way that creates some hypnotic textures. In Caroline Polachek’s Go as a dream, the two manage to bring out the popular inflections of the singer-songwriter’s original yet without making the recital lurch off course.

And spread amongst these are a smattering of Latin American tracks which seem to form a thread running through the recital. In fact, this sense of the Latin American experience almost forms a backbone to the recital, bearing in mind that the music can be linked back to the Iberian peninsula and to 20th century French music, amongst others. We even have a song by the Turkish folk singer Asik Veysel which was originally arranged for guitar in 1983 and here rearranged.

Like the de Falla, the three songs from Ravel’s popular Greek songs, in Soukaras’s own arrangements, also sound as if they were meant to be and the combination of voice and guitar brings a very different quality to the two songs. With the lighter guitar accompaniment, the Chanson de la mariée becomes less upfront, more haunted yet still folk-inflected, whilst Chanson des cueilleuse de lentisques is magical indeed.

A similar thing happens to Britten’s The Second Lute Song of the Earl of Essex. Originally from Gloriana, sung by tenor and orchestra, this uses an arrangement by guitar by Julian Bream but somehow with Betts-Dean’s mezzo-soprano voice the song under goes another transmutation as her voice floats, mysteriously unsupported, in a way few tenors after Peter Pears have achieved.

The rather evocative paintings used for the disc’s cover and booklet are from 2015 and 2017 by Heather Betts, the Australian artist who happens to be Lotte Betts-Dean’s mother.

The recording itself is something of a bit of magic too. Soukaras’ guitar is recorded with plenty of crunch detail yet with air around the sound which matches Betts-Dean’s voice where her seductive, smooth and silky quality is given a positive aura around it. The result is to make the disc a complete package.

everything you’ve ever lived
Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo-soprano)
Dimitris Soukaras (guitar)
Recorded 2-3 December 2024 at Crichton Collegiate Church, Edinburgh
DELPHIAN RECORDS DCD34348 1CD [61.21]