SKU: HL.1108586

UPC: 196288103318. 6.75x10.5x0.029 inches. Ephesians 5:21, I Peter 1:15-16, I Samuel 12:14.

Moving forward with assurance and regal confidence, this festive flourish is a call to ministry. The text reminds us to be devoted to the work of the kingdom and to walk worthy of the high calling of Christ.

SKU: A2.S034

ISBN 978-0-89579-775-9. 8.5x11 inches.

This edition includes three piano works by the German-Jewish composer Hans Samuel (1901-76), who was active primarily as an organist and composer of organ music. The selected works - Hassidic Hanukkah Tune: Al hanissim we al hapurkan (1946), Sounds of Slichoth: Paraphrases on S'lichoth Tunes According to the Ashkenas-Western Mode (1957, dedicated to the composer's parents, who perished in Theresienstadt), and Variations on a Yemenite Tune (undated) - were composed after Samuel's emigration to Palestine in 1939. Besides exemplifying the heightened awareness of diverse Jewish musical traditions that characterizes Samuel's music after his emigration, these works are representative of Israeli immigrant composers' early struggles to attempt to define their new nation musically.

SKU: ST.Y287

ISBN 9790220223198.

Composed for the internationally regarded Choir of New College, Oxford, and its conductor Edward Higginbottom, Rhian Samuel's What Cheer? is a bright and uplifting new setting of words already familiar to singers from popular carols by William Walton and Peter Warlock. The scoring is for SATB choir and organ, with optional short solos for soprano, alto and bass.

An eminent and established song composer, Samuel has brought to this text, originally from a 16th-century commonplace book compiled by Richard Hill, her own idiomatic response to the tradition of music for Christmas. Though written for one of the world's great vocal ensembles, What Cheer? is well within the range of accomplished amateur choirs, and the effective scoring for voices captures in ringing choral sounds the buoyant optimism of this poetic celebration of Christ's birth.

SKU: ST.Y222

ISBN 9790220221491.

A short choral nocturne for SATB and organ, Pan ddaw ust y nos is a setting of a poem by Nesta Wyn Jones. Welsh speakers will respond to the subtle imagery and verbal nuance of the poet's wordplay, as well as to the intense lyric moment of charged reminiscence captured both in her evocation of bygone summer evenings and in Rhian Samuel's simple, evocative music. Pan ddaw ust y nos was written for the London Welsh Chorale, conductor Kenneth Bowen, was premiered at St David's Cathedral, West Wales, on 24 September 2005. An English translation by the composer is also included.

SKU: ST.Y296

ISBN 9790220223525.

Nature and landscape have been the dominant themes of much of Rhian Samuel's vocal music of the last ten years, projected chiefly through the poetry of Anne Stevenson, and in her most recent song-settings, the writings of the Pakistan-born Texas-based poet Zulfikar Ghose. His poem 'Conspiracy of the Clouds' describes how, the clouds having chosen to become invisible, 'Even the astronauts on the space shuttle / looked down on a cloudless America' as hurricanes ravage Louisiana and storms engulf Nebraska. An intriguing conceit in the tradition of magic realism, the text is presented as a scena lasting around 16 minutes, with interpolations from 'Haze' by the nineteenth-century New England transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. Thus modern fable and romantic nature-description are juxtaposed, and their interaction becomes the source of musical contrasts too. Thoreau's words are assigned predominantly to the vocalist's highest register, those of Ghose to her lower tessitura; and the suggestive and dramatic accompaniment builds tension steadily to the final ironic response of an incredulous American public: not one of awe and wonder, but the question 'Why weren't we told about it?

SKU: ST.Y258

ISBN 9790220222504.

Prized among Welsh speakers, the anonymous 14th-century poem Yr Alarch ('The Swan') is a striking verbal portrait of 'this being without blemish', conveyed in terms of memorable imagery which has inspired Rhian Samuel's short setting for unaccompanied baritone. A rarity in its being a true solo song, this stirring tone-picture is also a showpiece, part lyrical, part declamatory, with contemporary vocal techniques sensitively employed. It will be enjoyed by Welsh-speaking singers and audiences for its heightened atmosphere that conveys the magical presence of a creature ' bright-white above birds ... Heaven's cockerel, a shining crag.'.

SKU: ST.Y291

ISBN 9790220223372.

CONTENTS
1. Blackbird (Anne Stevenson) (b - g)
2. The moon is distant (Emily Dickinson) (b - g sharp)
3. Bird in hand (Anne Stevenson) (e flat - g flat)
4. On not being able to look at the moon (Anne Stevenson) (b - g)

For medium voice and piano or ensemble of flute, harp and string quartet, Moon and Birds is a substantial cycle of songs to words by Anne Stevenson and Emily Dickinson. Its sequence of four settings, 'Blackbird', 'The moon is distant' (Dickinson), 'Bird in hand' and 'On not being able to look at the moon' unfolds a symmetrical structure of contrasting yet interlocking moods in which the reflective second and fourth numbers, lunar visions of mystic tranquillity flawed by doubt and pain, temper with human frailty the bright epiphanies of the first and third songs.

There is a fascinating challenge here for the performer to embrace both elation and gravitas in a single reading, Samuel's vigorous musical invention binding the developing web of feeling with its own formal strengths and subtly illustrative moments. In the version for string quartet, flute and harp, first performed by Contemporary Connections on 4 November 2011 at St James's Church Piccadilly, the flute takes a prominent role throughout. Violins, viola and cello at times elaborate on the simpler textures of the keyboard version, though the two scores remain entirely compatible. The bluesy harmonies of the concluding number, whether weighted by sonorous string quartet or profiled in edgier piano chords, bring the cycle to a sombre conclusion with a proper sense of an emotional world traversed.

SKU: XC.MCB2104FS

UPC: 812598036589. 9 x 12 inches.

Written during the Covid-19 pandemic, Haven's Conviction is inspired by the perseverance of students facing overwhelming obstacles. Composer David Samuel has created a great new work for the concert band repertoire.