After Silence IV. Elemental Voces8

• Frank Ticheli (b. 1958):
• 1 Earth Song 04:18
• Jonathan Dove (b.1959):
• 2 Vertue 05:17
• Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976):
• 3 Hymn to St. Cecilia 11:05
• Mårten Jansson (b. 1965):
• 4 An Elemental Elegy 05:05
• Eric Whitacre (b. 1970):
• 5 Sleep 05:13
• Total Runtime 30:58

Info for After Silence IV. Elemental

After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music. Aldous Huxley.

In the essay from which the title After Silence is taken, Aldous Huxley offers his thoughts on the essential force of music. The most profoundly significant constituents of our being, he says, include our responses to beauty, pleasure, pain, ecstasy and death. These can best be ‘experienced, not expressed’ through silence, and after silence, through music.

These successive online releases will be followed by After Silence, a double album with a beautifully produced booklet, illustrated with contemporary artworks that add a visual dimension to the exploration of the themes. Exalted, vital and freed from their original contextual restraints, the choral works showcased in this project have been carefully compiled for their thematic power and inexhaustible capacity to express the inexpressible.

Andrea Haines, soprano
Eleonore Cockerham, soprano
Katie Jeffries-Harris, alto
Barnaby Smith, direction, alto
Blake Morgan, tenor
Euan Williamson, tenor
Christopher Moore, bass
Jonathan Pacey, bass
Sam Dressel, tenor (track 5)

VOCES8
is one of the most exciting and versatile vocal groups in the world. The multi award-winning ensemble fulfils an international annual touring schedule across Europe, the USA, Asia and Africa. Performance venues include the Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Tokyo Opera City, Tel Aviv Opera House, National Concert Hall Taipei, Cite de la Musique in Paris, Dijon Opera House, National Centre for the Performing Arts Beijing and Shanghai Concert Hall. Highlights of the 2013/2014 season include an extensive European concert schedule in addition to tours to the USA, Indonesia, Korea, Dubai, Moscow, and for “La Folle Journee” in Nantes and Tokyo.

With a specialism in classical choral music, the group performs repertoire ranging from Renaissance polyphony to unique Jazz and Pop arrangements. The ensemble regularly commissions and collaborates with world-renowned contemporary composers including Ola Gjeilo, Roxanna Panufnik, Thomas Hewitt Jones, Alexander Levine and Ben Parry. VOCES8 is delighted to be in partnership with the acclaimed arranger, Jim Clements as Arranger in Residence.

With an ongoing programme of recordings and live broadcast, VOCES8 is heard regularly on international television and radio, including Deutschlandradio Kultur, ARTE TV, Radio France Musique, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM. VOCES8 has recorded a series of award-winning discs for Signum Classics, including ‘Choral Tapestry’, ‘Bach Motets’, ‘Aces High’ and ‘Christmas’. The group has major recording plans for future disc releases to be announced in the coming season. VOCES8 is also an Ambassador for Edition Peters with whom it publishes arrangements and educational material, including the ‘VOCES8 Songbook’ and the ‘VOCES8 Method’.

Outreach and Education are at the core of VOCES8’s work and the group is delighted to be the flagship performance and education ensemble of the charitable music foundation, Voces Cantabiles Music (VCM). The ensemble leads an innovative series of music education workshops reaching 20,000 people annually around the world with the aim of inspiring creativity and excellence through music. The innovative education work of VCM has received praise from UNESCO. In 2013 VCM established the Gresham Centre in partnership with the Diocese of London, a vocal Centre for Excellence at Sir Christopher Wren’s beautiful St Anne & St Agnes Church, in the City of London. VOCES8 is also resident ensemble at Bedford School, Ardingly College, The Grey Coat Hospital and Milton Abbey.

Artistic collaborations with orchestras have included the Philharmonia, London Philharmonic Orchestra and period ensemble Les Inventions. VOCES8 has received support from Arts Council England, the Musicians Benevolent Fund and the Worshipful Company of Musicians. The group is also grateful for the support of official sponsor, T.M.Lewin.

This album contains no booklet.