All posts tagged: VOCES8

Saturday Soundtrack: Holy Week

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I was fortunate in my earlier life to sing Baroque and Renaissance music as part of the Shenandoah Valley group Canticum Novum. Custer LaRue, one of the eight-to-twelve singers depending on the gig, was definitely our ringer. I’ve seldom heard such a pure soprano voice. Along with a number of recordings and other highlights in her career, Custer was the “singing voice” of Reese Witherspoon in the movie Vanity Fair. (Custer also sang a solo at our twins’ baptismal service, accompanied by yours truly on guitar. While I doubt it made her musical resume, it was definitely a highlight of my musical career.) The other ringer was Carol Taylor. An award-winning choral director at McGill University, Carol fell in love with the sound of tracker organs and then fell in love with George Taylor, who happens to build world-class tracker organs (with his partner John Boody) in little Staunton, Virginia. I count myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity to sing with Custer, and with Debbie Hunter, Lucy Ivey, Shari Shull, Kay Buchannan, Constance …

Kate Rusby

The forward-looking folk stylings of Kate Rusby

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It was about 15 years ago when I first heard the beautiful vocals of English folksinger and songwriter Kate Rusby. I was walking through a small shop in the U.K., and the album that was playing on the shop’s sound system was her 2003 offering, Underneath the Stars. I walked out—with a copy of the CD in my bag—as a new fan, and I’ve been enjoying Rusby’s forward-looking traditional folk stylings ever since. Late last month, Rusby released a new album of Christmas music, Holly Head, which features tunes ranging from the traditional Lu Lay to the quirky Hippo for Christmas to Christina Rossetti’s classic Bleak Mid-Winter (Yorkshire).  For non-seasonal offerings, check out her 2019 performance of Benjamin Bowmaneer at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival. In addition to her vocal stylings, Rusby is also an excellent songwriter. Her work is covered by other artists, such as the international vocal group VOCES8 with their beautiful arrangement of Underneath the Stars. (VOCES8’s recent holiday concert in Georgetown was the subject of an earlier post this month.) From her breakout recordings in 1999 all the …

VOCES8

Remembering the innocents

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Last evening a sold-out Georgetown crowd was treated to a sumptuous musical feast of the season by the English-based VOCES8 ensemble. The “impeccable quality of tone and balance” that has been recognized by Gramophone and many others was on full display in the splendid acoustics of historic St. John’s Episcopal Church. The program was varied, reaching back to the music of Tómas Luis de Victoria, Michael Praetorius, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Benjamin Britten, while also reaching forward to contemporary composers Jonathan Rathbone, Jonathan Dove, and David Pickthall, among others. For me, the evening’s highlight was the moving Philip Stopford setting of the Coventry Carol, the traditional English carol dating from the 16th century. Stopford’s Lully, Lulla, Lullay—filmed by VOCES8 earlier this year in St. Stephen’s Walbrook Church, London—is as haunting and beautiful on film as it was in the live performance last evening. Soprano Eleonore Cockerham‘s soft, clear, yet ethereal voice is a treasure. The subject of the carol—the massacre of the innocent male children of Bethlehem by King Herod’s army following the birth …