SKU: GI.WW1732

UPC: 785147015963. English. Text source: Traditional spiritual. Traditional Spiritual.

Composer John Wykoff has set the familiar spiritual Soon I Will Be Done in a completely new way. While other settings exist, none treat the source material with deadly seriousness, as a personal requiem. With an incredibly beautiful and virtuosic piano accompaniment, this work will make an excellent concert centerpiece.

SKU: BA.BA08525

ISBN 9790006566037. 27 x 19 cm inches. Text Language: English. Text: Silvestri, Charles Anthony.

â??Tonight I Dance Aloneâ? for double choir a cappella consists of three poignant episodes from the life of an old man. We encounter him before his wedding, before celebrating his wedding anniversary and now as an elderly widower who says to his grandson:

â??Soon we will dance in the God-light,
My love and I.
Soon will the moon be ours again,
And the endless shining stars
In the halls of heaven.
Soon, my love, very soon;
But tonight, one last time,
Tonight I dance alone.�

The libretto and the descriptive music are deeply moving and constitute an ideal partnership. This is MÃ¥rten Jansson's first collaboration with the well-known librettist Charles Anthony Silvestri. The piece provides a well-worth challenge for ambitious choirs.

It was world-premiered by the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus under the baton of Philip Barnes on 1 October 2017 in Saint Louis, MO (USA)

The performance can be viewed on YouTube

SKU: PR.342402070

ISBN 9781491111253. UPC: 680160643226. Octavo inches. Text: Archibald R. Ammons. Archibald Ammons. Text by A.R. Ammons.

To benefit Chorus America, Stucky allowed himself to be auctioned off as a prize - the high bidder would receive a new work from the composer. After a few years and not really hearing anything, Stucky suddenly found himself up against a deadline. He reached back to a favorite poem by A.R. Ammons, Eyesight, which, he says, Won't let...his reader rest till the very last word...one of those sudden insights that leave us breathless..
This piece has an odd history. A few years ago, I agreed to be one of the“prizes” in an auction to benefit Chorus America: the highest bidder wouldget a new piece from me, while their money went to the organization. Thewinning bid came from a collection of several professional choruses anddirectors. But I was always a little vague about the details, and, hearingnothing more about it for a few years, forgot the whole thing.One day I received a message from Thomas Edward Morgan, directorof the Ars Nova Chamber Singers in Boulder: they had scheduled thepremiere of my new piece for a few weeks later, and could they have themusic, please? I needed a text, quickly, and (as usual) I was in a Los Angeleshotel room, not at home with my books. So I turned to the internet andsoon tracked down my favorite poet, A.R. Ammons (1926-2001).Once I stumbled on “Eyesight,” I remembered having loved the poemyears before. Archie must have loved it, too, because he included it bothin his Collected Poems 1951-1971 and in the later Selected Poems. It haseverything you want in an Archie Ammons poem: what Edward Hirschcalled his “offbeat, sideways, unpredictable radiance,” his “homespunglory.” It has one of his trademark conversations with a mountain (perhapsfrom his native North Carolina), it has the fluid motion from one line tothe next (enjambment, if you want to get technical) that won’t let him orhis reader rest till the very last word of the very last line, and it has in thatlast line one of those sudden insights that leave us breathless: “some thingsthat go are gone.”I miss Archie, but he’s not gone. I’m grateful for the wonderful poems heleft us, and I’m grateful that he was always generous and kind when I hadthe chutzpah to add my music to his.

SKU: ST.CN16P

ISBN 9790220224737.

As well as traditional genres, Richard Bullen's music embraces several contemporary ones including video and electronics, and shows a keen interest in location both in its formal possibilities and in its genius loci - its spirit of place. A five-minute stand-alone piece for SATB chorus, The Seven Arches was written for a site-specific project at the Dartington International Summer School: an invocation of the rich cultural and mythic past of the celebrated gardens. In poet Steve Willey's multi-layered text the remaining seven arches of the medieval courtyard become metaphors for this continuing presence. Bold arched melodies springing from resilient, purposeful chords likewise animate the music, a sonic tableau of the sites / sights and sounds of history. Click video tab for the premiere performance conducted by David Lardi with the Finchley Chamber Choir, and view the full text as presented in Willey's intriguing original visual conception of his poem about Dartington Hall.