![]() ![]() Traditions are freshened-listen to Chanticleer’s elegant ideas about “Noel nouvelet” or the harmonic anguish of Jonathan Rathbone’s setting of the Coventry Carol-and attention paid to new work as well, with two pieces by English mystic John Tavener and one by Finnish composer Jaakko Mantyjarvi. The unhackneyed material is mainly reflective, with the jaunty exceptions of a sparkling Spanish carol featuring Upshaw, the country gospel “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” and some of music director Joseph Jennings’ African American spiritual stylings. The 12 men also blend effortlessly with soprano Upshaw, as always a paragon of taste and clarity. For exquisite ensemble, nuanced interpretations and sheer beauty of sound, the new Christmas package from the acclaimed male vocal group is a standout, real gold among so much holiday gloss. Josef WoodardĬhristmas is preeminently a season for singing, and it doesn’t get much better than this. The project can also be viewed as a metaphor for the peaceful coexistence of varied, syncopated viewpoints in a city, or a world. In general, converging parts and overlapping sounds-choral passages and various soothing electronic textures among them-conspire toward a sound that could be called accidental ambient music. The final track, “Angels of Avenue A,” is a mad, cathartic collision of bell sounds. 11.) The sonic result, in this recording based on a studio re-creation of the multiple boombox events, is a dreamy fruitcake of parts, tranquil even through its anarchy. (The notion takes on a fresh intensity in the aftermath of Sept. New-music composer Phil Kline has been staging an odd “caroling” event in New York annually since 1992: Friends lug boomboxes around town, their sounds mixing and swirling as they circulate communally, in public. Socio-aesthetics are hard to avoid in this provocative, strangely appealing experiment. Those few exceptions aside, this is not a disc that repays close listening, but it might be nice in the background for that holiday party with your parents. Each vocalist has a solo or two, and they combine in different duets and trios, accompanied by a soft jazz quartet, children’s choir and the Vienna Symphony under Stephen Mercurio.įreshest and best is Domingo’s lively, unexaggerated singing of Gounod’s “Jesus of Nazareth” and the traditional Spanish carol “Hacia Belen Va un Burro.” Williams gets a nice new song, “Through the Eyes of a Child,” based on Bach’s Prelude in C from “The Well-Tempered Clavier,” and the rest is about what you would expect, for better or worse. The material is as varied as the singers, although the glossy arrangements leave it all sounding much alike. This recording is a souvenir of a concert in Vienna last Christmas, capturing four rather disparate singers in good voice and spirits. ![]()
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