Kile Smith: The Arc in the Sky
The Crossing/Donald Nally
Navona Records 6240
Total Time:  65:51
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

The Philadelphia-based choral group, The Crossing, returns in yet another major release of contemporary choral music.  Here they focus on a massive work for chorus commissioned from composer Kile Smith.  Smith is a noted choral composer and his work has appeared on previous releases from The Crossing.

The Arc in the Sky uses texts from one of the first minimalist poets, Robert Lax (1915-2000).  Lax was a close friend of the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton (The Seven Story Mountain) and some might find parallels in Lax’s poetry to the spirituality that Merton often detailed in his work and teachings.  He was also inspired by the Beat generation writers (though not a part of it).  Smith’s work organizes these texts into three larger sections, themselves set in three separate “movements”.  Thus this creates a larger numerological symbolism.

“Jazz” is the title of the opening set of three pieces.  This connects to the friendship of Lax and Merton and their love of going to jazz clubs but more specifically to Lax’s own feeling that jazz was a “metaphor for life”.  But at a deeper level, it allows Smith to explore some very rich harmony that adds an ethereal quality to the music.  The final movement of this set features a series of solo lines that hint almost at a spiritual quality.  It is almost like an angelic jam session.  Moving into the central section, “Praise”, Smith shifts gears slightly to a more ancient choral sound and focuses on male voices.  Modal harmony and chant inflections connecting to an ancient spirituality.  Female voices provide contrast in close intervallic writing with beautiful suspensions.  By the final “Psalm”, there is a fascinating blend of blues-like bends that comes from the use of the modes employed in the music.  It lends the music a sense of being both ancient and modern with the choral lines beginning to separate textually a bit to comment more and reflect.  The resulting harmonies continue to create an accessible backdrop to these introspective lines.  In the final section, “Arc”, Smith has chosen texts that create a dichotomy of views of beauty and ruin that stand alongside one another.  We move from descriptive texts in the first part, “Jerusalem”, (which feels more like a traditional modern choral setting) to an almost dissolution of thought in the final “The Arc” with its swelling and ever upward grasping.  There we are at the essence of the minimalist poetic style where a single word is all that remains within a repeated phrase.  The music somehow seems to blend both that opening harmonic sense of the modern within the ancient choral sounds that appeared earlier bringing this to a transcendent conclusion.

The Crossing presents a gorgeous and committed performance of this often stunning work.  It may very well be one of the finer choral albums of the year.  The sound captured here makes this equally captivating as it lends that sense of a larger, open space that allows just enough ambience to the music.  This helps further communicate a deeper spiritual sense, especially in the reflective moments.  It is further interesting to hear how the music blends a sense of jazz harmony and style with ancient modes and moments of brief minimalist style into an impressive work.  Easily one of the best releases this year.

In Heaven: Choral Music of Petr Eben
Jitro Czech Girls Choir/Jiri Skopal;
Frantisek Vanicek, organ.
Barbora Novotna, soloist, Michal Chrobak, piano.
Navona Records 6228
Total Time:  56:28
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

A collection of choral music from the 1960s and 1970s gives listeners a chance to explore the music of celebrated Czech composer Petr Eben (1929-2007).  He may be perhaps more known by those who follow developments in organ music as the composer was a noted improvisational organist.  Many of these performances were eventually notated and there are several recorded collections of his organ music.  Eben was raised Catholic and some of this spiritual and theological connection appears in his Liturgical Chants (1960), the Four Choruses on Latin Texts (1973), and the Cantonis Moralia (1974-75) recorded here.  Two additional works explore more secular themes.

The album opens with a 1995 recording of the Liturgical Chants.  The music has a more traditional harmonic support as the choir sings the primary chant idea in unison.  The setting follows the flow of a mass with an Introit, Graduale, sung Gospel text, Offertory, and communion with Psalm 29 being an additional text blended into the work.  The general sound hints at church modes but arrival points are more traditional harmonically.  Text setting tends to be mostly syllabic with occasional melismas.  The Four Choruses begin to introduce more close harmony with a nod to Medieval choral writing inspired by the ancient texts set here.  This lends the music a somewhat open sound where the resulting dissonance is often stunning.  Eben’s exploration of ancient texts also connects to early music in the Cantonis Moralia.  Here, he blends 3^rd Century texts and polyphony with the concept of a Baroque dance suite.  The six movement work opens with a prelude and then takes us through standard dance forms of the period mirroring Bach.  It is quite fascinating to hear how Eben works these period rhythms and forms to connect with his text.  Bach is also very much a part of the concluding About Swallows and Girls as his Art of the Fugue hovers in the background of these arrangements of various regional Czech folk music.  For contrast, we are treated to Ten Poetic Duets (1965) which is based on the poetry of Vitezslav Nezval and addresses themes of childhood and aging with colorful imagery inspiring the music.  This is some of the more chromatic, and intricate work presented on the album with a slight modern harmonic approach from time to time.

This is an important release for those who follow choral music and for bringing Eben’s music to a wider public.  Apart from the opening work, the recordings here date from 2006-7.  Texts for the pieces are also included.