Edie Hill: Clay Jug
The Crossing/Donald Nally
Navona Records 6073
Total Time:  47:46
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Edie Hill is a Minnesota-based composer whose work feels sometimes like an extension of Libby Larsen’s lyricism and beauty.  Hill studied with the composer, as well as Lloyd Ultan.  She has worked to encourage young composers while serving as the Composer-In-residence at the Schubert Club.  The present release brings together a variety of works for chorus.

The opening piece, From the Wingbone of a Swan, is for chorus with mixed chamber ensemble.  The different solo instrument colors weave intricately through the choral texture with an at times almost mesmerizing vibraphone idea adding a magical sense to the gorgeous harmonic writing in the central movement.  An ancient quality appears in the final “Paleolithic Flute” with an intriguing solo line seeming to pull as back in time.  The end result is an often intriguing blend of harmony and pure choral quality that is a sort of American parallel to some of the more familiar English choral music at the end of the 20^th Century.

Each of the smaller works explores different languages exhibiting Hill’s deftness and crafting fascinating sounds out of these texts whether from Anglo-Saxon (The Phoenix), Spanish (Cancion De El Alma), or Latin (Alma Beata Et Bella).  These set in contrast to the English texts of the other works here including a translation of a St. Teresa of Avila text (We Bloomed in Spring) and a translation by Robert Bly that forms the basis of Clay Jug.  The latter is a movement from a larger work.

The music is beautifully performed here by The Crossing—a Philadelphia-based chamber choir.  Pure tone and clarity of text helps lend itself to Hill’s intricate harmonies and lines.  It is interesting too to hear the shifts that seem to borrow their inspiration from ancient chant or Renaissance choral work within her distinct style.  (A side note that the style reminded me of Franz Beibl.) Certainly one of the label’s finer choral releases in a slate of many fine recordings.  It is helped by the recording in what would seem a perfect venue for this music.

The Stolen Child: Choral Works of Scott Perkins
Audivi/Scott Perkins
Navona Records 6067
Total Time:  49:30
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Three modern choral works by Scott Perkins appear on this Navona release.  Performances here are by the Detroit-based group Auvidi.  The recording here though, made last summer, finds them in  New Haven, Connecticut.  The composer conducts this program exploring themes of the loss of innocence inspired by the poetry of Yeats, Whitman, Auden, and de la Mare.

The Stolen Child (2006) is a six-movement work based on the poetry of William Butler Yeats.  These are framed with a prologue and epilogue with a sense of magic as a mysterious being calls out to the child to come away from the real world.  The inner texts explore the life cycle as well as the idea of “love” from different life stages.  The music here connects more to a modal underpinning with a quality that hearkens back to ancient music with its more open-sounding qualities.  Pedal points and open quartal harmonies help lend some of this atmosphere with a rather haunting quality.  The harmony itself will shift about more to create dissonance and most interesting are the many solo lines that are tossed about the ensemble.  The movement from dissonant choral clusters outward create an equally fascinating quality.

The central work on the album, A World Out of the Sea (2003), has themes of death and transformation.  Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” serves as the basis for this five-movement work.  The style here continues like that of the previous work.  Though here there are some exploration of contemporary techniques and sounds one can create with the voice—most audible in the fascinating “Demon or Bird!”.

Finally, we enter another magical world in The World of Dream (2016).  Here, sleep becomes the method to enter into the dreamworlds inspired here by the poetry of W.H. Auden and Walter de la Mare.  The music here continues along the lines of that heard earlier with more fascinating cadential moments and careful layering of harmonies.

These pieces each on their own are interesting works in what is a relatively subdued choral album.  The music falls along the lines of Lauridsen with touches of ancient music.  The lines are quite stunning at times and Perkins certainly has been fortunate to have these singers at his disposal.