Two Words, One Answer.
Jonathan Roberts
 Last Man Standing $0.00 The shootout in the Hyatt totally lost me before it was even through. Completely unrealistic ballistics... I won't waste another second watching this POS.  WH733 - Robert Abbey Lighting - Jonathan Adler Capri - Pendant - Jonathan Adler Capri 200% Low Price Guarantee. Additional Year of Warranty. No Return Fees.Collection: Jonathan Adler Capri, Width/Diameter: 8.75", Length: 132.75", Lamp: 1-60w bulb(s), -  James Whitbourn: A Finer Truth $17.49 James Whitbourn started his musical career as a choral scholar at Magdalen College in Oxford. He then got a position with the BBC where he worked in the religious broadcast department. He produced and conducted short choral pieces for the Daily Service Singers that were broadcast everyday to a large audience. He has also produced the annual Christmas service from the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge since 1990, as well as editing Radio 3's Choral Evensong series from 1990 to 2001. He was commissioned choral and orchestral compositions for the BBC television and radio broadcasting, including the music for the documentary series Son of God, on which his choral mass included in this CD is based. He also produced memorial services for the great and the good, and was responsible for the worldwide radio broadcast of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. This experience affects his work as a composer and is well reflected in the CD, the first to sample his work on this media. First, he has been involved with about every aspect of making music available to the public: James Whitbourn is a composer, but also a choir singer, a conductor, a producer and a writer. He plays the role of a modern Chapel Master, at a time when the broadcast media has replaced the role of princely commissions. Second, his original compositions are intended for a particular occasion and purpose. They have to fit the live stage of the devotional service or the images and plot lines of documentaries. They have to be immediately compelling in order to appeal to a large audience with rather conservative expectations with respect to sacred music. These constraints should not be seen as setting limits on the freedom of the composer. Rather, they are the starting point from which he can elaborate with breadth and depth, in order to convey simple and powerful messages to the listener. James Whitbourn's Son of God Mass, written for choir, organ and saxophone, easily illustrates this point. Like Crown My Heart, the mesmerizing anthem that opens this CD selection, it has its roots in a television series, its themes having been written for a documentary series, screened at Easter 2001, entitled Son of God. It interweaves liturgical movements, from the Kyrie and Gloria to the Agnus Dei, which are interpreted just by the choir and organ, with meditative passages where the choir has much shorter text and sings along the evocative sound of the soprano saxophone. James Whitbourn is not the first to exploit the polyphonic fit between the saxophone and sacred choir music. Among recent releases, Jan Garbarek's foray with the Hilliard Ensemble, as well as John Harle's Terror and Magnificence, are two albums which have met with huge popular success. This is not entirely accidental. Early sacred music provides structures over which a saxophone can freely improvise, reviving a polyphonic tradition when the number of parts was a matter of experiment and the same piece could exist in many different versions. Also the sound of the saxophone is surprisingly akin to the range of the human voice. John Harle's saxophone has a vocal quality that makes it almost a singer without word, with the pitch and phrase of a soloist. Apart from the Hilliard Ensemble, mentioned earlier, James Whitbourn's musical influence evokes the sacred minimalism of fellow Englishman John Tavener, as well as the liturgical simplicity and lack of ornamentation of the Orthodox Church ritual as revived by modern composers Arvo Part and Sofia Gubaidulina. The last piece, The Mystery of Love, is an ambitious cantata scored for tenor solo, choir, organ and a chamber ensemble, including substantial parts for world instruments such as the Djembe, Tibetan prayer bowls, Japanese cymbals and other percussions. It is written after poems from Robert Tear, and the music testifies to a deep understanding of the texts, not in the sense that the score tries to imitate the text, but rather that both concur in reaching a profound meaning behind the words. Especially in the last movement, Go So Gently, written on the death of the poet's father, the composer is able to echo and empathize with what caused the words to be written, without substituting his own interpretation to the poet's sorrow. One only hopes that more of James Whitbourn's music will be made available to the public, and in particular that his last creation, Annelies, an oratorio with a text based on Anne Franck's Diary, will soon be released on CD. |
|
