Joyful Company of Singers - Choral Music - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

In March 2026, Métier presents a stunning album of choral music from Northumberland-based composer John Casken, inspired by the region's magnificent landscape and coastline, it's changing colours, history, and poetry. The recording features Joyful Company of Singers under the direction of Peter Broadbent and reflects two years of working alongside the composer.The album features evocative and powerful settings of poems by writers from 7th-century Northumbrian cowherder Caedmon to George Herbert, John Donne, Robert Burns, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Northumbrian poet Katrina Porteous, and John Casken himself.The album contains many Northumbrian connections, especially in the works written for choirs in Durham and Northumberland, including the Choir of Durham Cathedral and Newcastle Cathedral, Northern Sinfonia Chorus, and the choir John Casken himself started - Coquetdale Chamber Choir.The works are grouped around timeless and deeply resonant themes, the headings drawn from within their texts Northumberland's seascape and dialect are central to Uncertain Sea, the single work in 'Far from Land'. The focus of 'Sacred Shaper' is Christianity in early times, followed by an Easter sequence Stone and Thorn, and finally music of farewell, Fare thee weel. Stones also play a part, whether rolling on the seabed, in memorials of stone, Inchthe stone rolled away from Christ's tomb,Inch or as an allegory for virtues symbolised in the stone floor of a church. The choir takes up various roles - sometimes as the voice of a community, or as voices coming together to offer reflection, or simply to tell a story through the music.John Casken's painting for the cover of this recording includes the stones of Dunstanburgh Castle bordering the seas; in Katrina Porteous's words, InchBlack Dunstanburgh withstands / The waves, the years.Inch Album Tracks 1. Uncertain Se

The reputation of Havergal Brian (1876-1972) as a late-blossoming symphonist obscures the fact that he was an early-blossoming composer of choral music for the huge market of amateur choirs thriving in Edwardian England. His choral songs range from simple unison settings for children's or women's voices to harmonically complex essays intended to tax the ability of groups taking part in the choral competitions once popular in many parts of Britain. Album Tracks 1. Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day 2. Soul Star 3. Come O'er the Sea 4. Lullaby of An Infant Chief 5. Ah! County Guy, Serenade for Equal Voices 6. Violets 7. Fair Pledges of a Fruitful Tree 8. Grace for a Child 9. A Song of the Willow 10. And Will He Not Come Again? 11. Ye Spotted Snakes 12. Fear No More the Heat of the Sun 13. Under the Greenwood Tree 14. Full Fathom Five 15. Come Away, Death 16. The Blossom 17. The Fly 18. The Little Boy Lost 19. The Little Boy Found 20. Piping Down the Valleys Wild 21. The Chimney Sweeper 22. The Little Black Boy 23. Four Choral Songs from Prometheus Unbound 24. Spring - Sound the Flute 25. Summer Has Come, Little Children 26. Goodbye to Summer 27. Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind

Various Artists - Sing Joyfully [COMPACT DISCS] date 02/01/2011