Recording information: St. Paul Seminary Chapel, St. Paul, Minnesota.

This organ CD is always on the Gothic Records best-sellers list, year after year. With both popular and unusual works in his program, Cathedral Organist Donald Dumler strikes just the right balance of musical choices.

Both the Chancel and Grand Gallery Organs were built by Kilgen, and are controlled by two new "twin" five-manual consoles. With 177 stops and over 9,000 pipes, the organ is both a grand musical statement, and a priceless antique whose sounds evoke the ideals of organ building in the 1920's. - Gothic Records

Includes christmas carol(s) by various composers. Ensembles: Cathedral Choral Society, Washington Symphonic Brass. Conductor: J. Reilly Lewis. Soloists: Eric Plutz, Edward M. Nassor.

The choir of All Saints Beverly Hills provides a superb sampling of the current state of contemporary Anglican hymnody. Included here are numerous familiar tunes with descants old and new, and a few first recordings as well Among the latter is a tune by Thomas Foster honoring organ builder, C. B. Fisk. The choir is beautifully accompanied by Craig Phillips on an organ refined by Manuel Rosales. - Gothic Records

"This charming recording combines traditional plainchant elements with a setting of the Mass to French carol tunes, arranged in Baroque polyphony by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, a prolific and intriguing composer of church music...All is well and tastefully done by the Virgin Consort, directed by Kyler Brown."

-- Sarah Bryan Miller, New York Times [101996]

The Washington National Cathedral Choir (comprised of the Choir of Men and Boys, and the Choir of Men and Girls) is one of the few cathedral choirs in the United States with an affiliated school in the English Tradition—and this is their first recording on Gothic with their new director, Michael McCarthy. Appointed in 2003, McCarthy was the founding director of the London Oratory School Schola. The Schola recorded for the film scores of both The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and the Harry Potter film series. McCarthy brings a fresh approach to Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols, and delightful readings of many other Christmas carols. One of America's finest Anglican choirs! - Gothic Records

Benjamin Britten: A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28
Britten: A Hymn to the Virgin
Richard Rodney Bennett: Suanni
arr. Robert Lucas de Pearsall: In dulci jubilo
arr. John Stainer: What child is this
Kenneth Leighton: Lully lulla
arr. Sandys, Bramley & Stainer: I saw three ships
Morten Lauridsen: O magnum mysterium
John Rutter: There is a flower
Peter Warlock: Bethlehem Down
Peter Wishart: Alleluya! A new work is come on hand

Christmas Echoes, Vol. 2

The worldwide revival of Compline, a late-night service dating from early Christian times, began with this choir and the vision of its founder, Peter Hallock. Today, hundreds of young people fill Saint Mark’s Cathedral (Seattle) every Sunday night to hear this choir, and they are joined by thousands who hear Compline over radio and the Internet.

This recording honors the musical craft of Peter Hallock and Richard Proulx, who wrote much of the music sung by this choir since its founding in the mid-1950s. - Gothic Records

Eben: Okna - Starer: 3 Preludes - Hamlin: Sonata ben melodic

The performance of Duruflé's transcription for 2 organs of Handel's 8th Organ Concerto is a tour de force. Mere words become woefully irrelevant.

Originally recorded in 1967 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, this release projects, among other virtues, a tangible sense of occasion. The shrine's two organs had been installed and dedicated in 1965, but the Duruflés' recital of two years later was the first to utilize both instruments simultaneously, in Marcel Duruflé's transcription for two organs of the eighth of Handel's 16 concertos for organ and orchestra. That was, by the evidence on this release, a performance tour de force. The two instruments (the great and the chancel organ) are separated by a distance of some 300 feet, a virtual city block. The Duruflés overcame that vast and vastly disorienting sonic space by resorting to the sounds transmitted via telephone headsets rather than those of the acoustic surround. The result is a breathtaking synchronici-ty of attack and release, not merely of purely technical precision, but of musical affect as well.

Clarity and precision, not merely that of getting the right fingers to the right keys and pedals in a timely fashion, but of going, straightaway, to the heart of the musical discourse at hand, inform each track on this release. The little Schumann Canon in B Minor projects a playfulness that underscores its inherent irony. The Tournemire piece (a vast improvisation by that composer subsequently reconstituted by her husband) becomes, appropriately, César Franck on speed. Mme. Duruflé's clear-eyed realization of its every Easter-chant-derived iota converts it into a grippingly human drama, at once horrifying and consoling.

Of the incense-tinged Prelude and Fugue of Marcel Duruflé, I will say nothing. Mere words become woefully irrelevant.

If you've been lulled to sleep by my verbosity, wake up and get this one before it becomes, as is so much of the best that music has to offer, unavailable.

-- William Zagorski, FANFARE [1/2000]

Silent Night: A Christmas Program

Gothic Record’s original recording, The Spirit of Freedom, features the outstanding Washington Men’s Camerata in a spectacular collection of patriotic classics. The 23 selections include the complete “National Anthem” (all 4 verses!), “God Bless America,” “National Hymn (“God of Our Fathers”), “Chester,” “Anchors Aweigh,” “Yankee Doodle,” “Hail to the Chief,” and many more beautifully-sung favorites! (Gothic)

Edward Elgar at Woolsey Hall

Includes work(s) by various composers. Soloist: Susan Jane Matthews.

Marches

Mary Preston, In Concert!

Evensong for Epiphany

Hymns on the Crystal Cathedral Organ

Mary Preston Plays Durufle & Widor

During the 2005-6 season, Gwyneth Walker traveled across the US working with a variety of musicians as they premiered and recorded her works. During a week spent in Walla Walla, WA, she worked with the choirs at Whitman College as they rehearsed and recorded this new program of choral music, which employs evocative texts by Langston Hughes, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and Virginia Hamilton Adair, among others. Booklet notes include the full song texts. 17 World Premiere Recordings! "Gwyneth Walker is a master composer with a fertile imagination..."

Classical Music

Classical Music

Includes hymn(s) by various composers. Ensembles: National Cathedral Choral Society Washington, D.C., Washington Ringing Society. Conductor: J. Reilly Lewis. Soloists: Eric Plutz, Edward M. Nassor, Rachel Barham, James Shaffran, John G. Sprague.

Classical Music

The virtuoso ensemble Philadelphia Brass join organist Joan Lippincott at the large 135-rank Mander organ of Princeton University Chapel in this grandly conceived recording, animated by the Chapel's large acoustical space. The recording presents three original works for organ and brass: Lockwood's Concerto for Organ and Brasses, Dupre's Poeme Heroique and Widor's Salvum fac populuum tuum, plus six additional works arranged for organ and brass. For most of the 1990's Organ Prof. Emerita Ms. Lippincott was Principal University Organist at Princeton University.