The prolific young composer Jake Runestad has won numerous awards for his music, which ranges from opera to works for chamber ensemble. He is particularly valued for his choral compositions which exemplify a desire to write expertly crafted, socially conscious and emotionally potent music. On this album, Runestad explores a profound sea/life journey in The Secret of the Sea, and projects a powerful expression of grief in Let My Love Be Heard. Nature is a recurring theme for the composer and he employs texts that exalt the natural world, as well as finding seldom heard sound combinations in the exhilarating Ner Ner. Jake Runestad is one of the youngest composers ever awarded the Raymond W. Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association in 2018- the foremost commission available to composers of choral music in the USA. He is considered ‘one of the best of the younger American composers’ (Chicago Tribune) and this is only the second album of his music to be issued.

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REVIEW:

Each of these 10 works by Jake Runestad, written between 2006 and 2018, has a similar reverence for texts that touch deeply but gently on human issues and benefit from his imaginatively varied toolkit of resources. That he writes well for singers is enthusiastically proved by the all-volunteer Denver-based Kantorei choral ensemble and eight instrumentalists, and some fullblooded recordings.

– Gramophone