This album was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.

O Beauty Ever Ancient Ever New surveys the historical canon of chants, modes, texts, and textures. Composer, choral director and organ soloist James Buonemani’s early interest in composition has evolved into a focus on directing and composing music exclusively for the church. The Choir of St. James is made up of amateur and professional adult musicians from the Los Angeles metropolitan area. (Gothic)

• First recording of the professional vocal ensemble Cathedra, which is based at Washington National Cathedral andirected by Michael McCarthy

The Anglican musical tradition is rich with music for All Saints Day. The choirs of St. Philips Cathedral in Atlanta, under the direction of Dale Adelmann, perform new and traditional anthems with themes of heaven and the saints. Mr. Adelmann, Canon for Music at the Cathedral of St. Philip since 2009, has conducted choral festivals and workshops across the US. He is a past president of the Association of Anglican Musicians and served terms as editor and consulting editor of its Journal. Completing a Ph.D. specializing in the revival of Anglican choral worship at the University of Cambridge, England, he became the first North American to sing in the Choir of St. John’s College, and served as musical director of The Gentlemen of St. John’s.

The South Dakota Chorale is a professional chorus organization that gathers talented singers to share impacting performances of choral arts. Based in Sioux Falls, SD - the Chorale provides local professional singers the unique opportunity to make music, in their own backyard, with other great singers and instrumentalists from around the country. The Chorale recorded their debut commercial album with Grammy-winning producer Blanton Alspaugh. The album is particularly significant in that it includes the first major American recording of the Duruflé Requiem that utilizes Duruflé’s solo organ score. The South Dakota Chorale brings a rare opportunity for music lovers to add this version of the Requiem to their own collections.

Few organists are as well known or highly praised for their Bach recordins as Joan Lippincott. Performing on the newly constructed Craighead-Saunders organ at Christ Church, Rochester, NY (closely modeled after a 1776 instrument by the central German organbuilder, Casparini), Lippincott brings a maturity of vision to Art of Fugue that is based on a lifetime of distinguished interpretations and insights into Bach's organ works.

SIMPLE GIFTS • Doug Fullington, cond; Tudor Ch • GOTHIC 49265 (59:35 &)


Choruses and arrangements by BRACKETT, HAMMOND, jr., BRADY, SIEGFRIED, BILLINGS, NEAUM, POSTON, THOMSON, COPLAND, fine, Ireland, VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, PERCIVAL, RUTTER, FULLINGTON, CHILCOTT, TRAD


The Tudor Choir is a Seattle-based chamber chorus of 12 voices, whose recording on Loft of Shaker music, in arrangements by Kevin Siegfried, Craig Zeichner “implored” us to buy (25:1). This recording is intended as a complement to that earlier one, and offers slightly more varied fare, all of it from the same musical and emotional neighborhood, however. The choir uses little vibrato and its fairly bright sound lets the sopranos stick out at the cost of the altos, though this is in part because there are only two altos but four sopranos. The choir sings cleanly and articulates clearly, and that is always a plus, even if one wishes there were a bit more heft now and then.


The core of this program is Shaker music, though only one Shaker piece is done in the unison we take to be the Shaker style, and that is the title piece (which, however, uses a variant of the melody we best know in Aaron Copland’s use of it in Appalachian Spring ). These words, and three different arrangements of it, by Kevin Siegfried, Copland (as further arranged by Irving Fine), and Bob Chilcott (for the King’s Singers), recur throughout the program. These are certainly more polished versions of Shaker tunes than those exhibited on Joel Cohen’s more scholarly recording with the same title (on Erato), done in the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community.


The major piece on the program is At the water’s edge , a setting by Kevin Siegfried of four poems by Sarah Orne Jewett. Commissioned in 2005 by the community chorus of South Berwick, Maine, where Jewett lived, these are gentle, largely consonant, nature settings, though the third, in five parts, ventures some discreet dissonance. They are similar in style with the rest of the program.


This matter of stylistic coherence is one of the striking features of this recording. Most of the arrangements are by Siegfried, and those by others share similar traits. That is, they tend to adopt the scale-structure of the melody being arranged. This was a technique demonstrated to great effect by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker in their arrangements of spirituals, which, like a number of the tunes here, have “gapped scales,” that is, scales that are incomplete somewhere within them.


This is a fine recording and I think Siegfried’s unfussy Jewett settings are certainly worth getting to know. They are a solid, mainstream, contribution to the modern American choral repertoire.


FANFARE: Alan Swanson

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Includes work(s) by Luca Pianca, Corinna Korff. Ensemble: Washington Memorial Pipes. Conductor: Frank Albinder.

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The Oregon Repertory Singers’ debut album on Gothic Records features the music of Morten Lauridsen and other Pacific Northwest composers. (Gothic)

This disc was recorded live at the 1995 Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in Charleston, South Carolina.el 11/01 koch del list
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bklt, tc omit rec dates
Resolicited 05/07/02 Allegro cat
In Tune 5/96 P.138
arg 9/96 p.262
fan 9/96 p.385

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This program honors those who have served in the armed forces of the United States of America. “The Call”, which was commissioned by the choir, is by Dave Metzger, widely known for his many arrangements and orchestrations for films such as Training Day, August Rush, Frozen and the Broadway production of The Lion King--for which he won a Tony Award. (Gothic)

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These premiere recordings, consisting of a Missa Brevis and Evensong settings plus organ interludes and voluntaries, represent the entire body of James D’Angelo’s sacred music. + An American living in England, the composer has assimilated and melded together diverse styles as found in the music of Gesualdo and other chromatic Renaissance composers, Hindemith, Debussy, Ravel, Holst and his mentor, the 20th c. Parisian composer Jean Catoire. + The resulting unique stylistic fusion has become the hallmark of Mr. D’Angelo’s distinctive musical language.

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The Gothic Records best-selling recording of the Wanamaker Grand Court organ is back by popular demand! Peter Richard Conte performs at the Macy's City Center in Philadelphia. With state-of-the-art recording techniques including HDCD digital encoding, this CD offers an amazing sonic experience. Formally out of print and unavailable, we are excited to announce its long-awaited reissue on the Gothic label. -

Gerre Hancock, a master of improvisation in Anglican style plays the great organ of St Thomas Church in NYC. Also includes works by Bach, de Grigny, and Reger. - Gothic Records

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In addition to familiar seasonal music by Mendelssohn, Handel, Rutter, and others, Christmas at America’s First Cathedral features music from South Africa, Canada, and the United States, including the premiere recordings of seven new works by two of America’s most important African American composers, Dr. Rosephanye Powell and Dr. James Lee III. Dr. Lee’s motet, "A Clean Heart" is from a collection of four motets composed in 2009. The six selections by Dr. Powell comprise a suite called, Christmas Give, commissioned by Baltimore Choral Arts and given its world premiere December 1, 2009 at the Baltimore Basilica. - Gothic Records

This is the first in a series recorded at the Washington National Cathedral featuring new American choral music.

William Hawley (b. 1950) is one of the central figures in today's American choral music renaissance. As a student at Ithaca College and the California Institute of the Arts, he composed avant-garde instrumental works, and even flirted with minimalism. The launch of his Two Motets in 1981 demonstrated a shift to vocal music and a more emotionally direct style. His continuing American choral music has helped establish compositional trends since adopted by Morten Lauridsen, Eric Whitacre, and the like. Winner: American Prize in Choral Performance and the Margaret Hillis Award.