Cohen / Detrick / Farias - Ancestral Voices - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Under the title 'Origins', this album brings together works by composers of the first half of the twentieth century who frequently found inspiration in the musical traditions of their country. This musical journey travels across Europe from France to the borders of Asia. If Béla Bartók's role in this field of the integration of popular traditions into classical language is indisputable, the personalities of the other composers assembled here deserve to be discovered. The Jewish composer Erwin Schulhoff was one of those whose works were relegated by the Nazi regime to this category of 'degenerate music'. The Azerbaijani Fikret Amirov and the Armenian Arno Babajanian were victims of the constraints of the Soviet regime. And although Charles Koechlin produced an imposing catalogue of works, he suffered throughout his life from the fact that his career as a composer was eclipsed by his reputation as a theorist. All these works inspired by national music are contemporary with the political turbulence that agitated Europe between the two world wars, but also with the numerous movements that caused major upheavals in every artistic field during the same period.

Sjaella is the vocal ensemble of the moment to discover! Six talented and effervescent female singers who are not afraid of anything and demonstrate as much in a program entitled Origins, ranging from seventieth-century repertory to contemporary pieces. Out of the ether, into existence. The initial point. The beginning. The ever-recurring origin. Between minimalism and picturesque arias arise light, time, and all life. In Origins, the female vocal ensemble Sjaella focuses on natural cycles that have surrounded us since the dawn of time. In every era, people have experienced the changes in the seasons, the gentle rhythm of day and night, the individual flow of the body, and the transience of rebirth. All of these themes are presented as a unit, which forms a cycle of key concepts from the origin of life to a post-apocalyptic vacuum. The music contrasts and combines new arrangements of English songs of the seventeenth century, some of them from Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen, with contemporary pieces, including those in the American Minimalist style, such as David Lang's Evening, Morning, Day. By including mainly commissioned works, the album shows Sjaella's close collaboration with renowned international composers such as Paola Prestini, singer-songwriter Shara Nova and former King's Singers member Philip Lawson.

Paul Conway writes InchOne of Musgrave's most powerfully expressive and lavishly intricate vocal works, Rorate Coeli (1973) is scored for unaccompanied SATB choir. There are also five soloists (SSATB), who sing both as a quintet and as individuals. This dramatic and virtuosic piece shows an inventive approach to text-setting in it's use of quasi-improvised musical effects. The Voices of our Ancestors (2014) is scored for brass quintet (horn, two trumpets, trombone and tuba), organ and SATB choir. Substantial and ambitious, The Voices of our Ancestors draws upon ancient texts from a number of linguistic sources, including Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Egyptian and Chinese, all translated into English. Commissioned by Wells Cathedral, Missa Brevis, for SATB choir and organ (2017) was first performed by Wells Cathedral Choir, on the Feast of John the Baptist, Sunday 24 June 2018, in the presence of the composer. This compact setting of the Ordinary of the Mass has a reassuring, positive character with several of the sections concluding brightly on major chords.Inch