As I understand it the genesis of this recent CD from Philadelphia choir The Crossing and their conductor Donald Nally was members emailing each other clips of recordings from live concerts to keep their morale up during lockdown. I guess in that respect it’s got something in common with this show. No surprise then that the album is quite eclectic. There’s around seventy minutes of music with twelve tracks in all.
The Elmer Iseler Singers and their conductor Lydia Adams returned to live performance at Eglinton St. George’s United Church yesterday with a programme that included the World Premiere of Timothy Corlis’ Om Saha Nāvavatu. The first half of the programme though consisted of four shorter works. First up was Three Motets to Our Lady by Healey Willan. The piece sets three texts; two invoking the Virgin Mary and one from The Song of Songs. They are conventional but effective polyphonic settings and were very skilfully performed. I’m not a huge Willan fan (heresy I know) but I really enjoyed these.
operaramblings 