COMPOSERS: Castille,Hill,Hopkins & Van Ness,Jennings,Rivera,Scelsi,Viahul,Victoria,Works by Gilbert
LABELS: Warner
ALBUM TITLE: Sound in Spirit
WORKS: Cor meum est templum; Night Spirit Song; In Winter's Keeping
PERFORMER: Chanticleer
CATALOGUE NO: 2564 61941-2
Chanticleer, the distinctive
California-based vocal ensemble
including adult male sopranos, here
offers an ecumenical feast of sacred
meditative music – or rather, with
such bite-sized pieces, a spiritual
smorgasbord. The Catholic tradition
is represented by a Victoria motet,
together with some plainchant and
one of the 13th-century Cantigas
de Santa Maria, in colourful
arrangements by director Joseph
Jennings; it’s also alluded to in the
Latin text of Patricia Van Ness’s
anodyne Cor meum est templum
sacrum, and transcended in Giacinto
Scelsi’s mystically microtonal Gloria.
There’s 19th-century Orthodox
chant from Romania, and an
imitation of Byzantine style in one of
Jan Gilbert’s NightChants.
Beyond Christianity, another
NightChant evokes Tibetan
Buddhism ritual, as does Carlos
Rafael Rivera’s Motet, while the
Japanese variety is reflected in
Jackson Hill’s luminous In Winter’s
Keeping. A third Gilbert chant and
Jennings’s Night Spirit Song summon
up Native American ceremonies;
Sarah Hopkins’s Past Life Melodies
introduces Australian Aboriginal
chanting and overtone singing.
Everything’s strung together into a
continuous sequence, with much use
of natural sounds, real and imitated,
and drones. The performances
are impeccably tuned and sound
consistently beautiful, though the
(studio-created?) cathedral-like
acoustic seems to have less to do with
the music than with the spiritual
theme. Anthony Burton