Inspiring New Choral Music Elevates!

Are You Looking For Me? Elevation Meyer Media MM 24057 Total Time:  46:19 Recording:   ****/**** Performance: ****/****

Elevation is a Delaware-based vocal ensemble that explores various musical traditions in their innovative concert programs.  They are a branch of Elevate Vocal Arts that provides a host of educational and development opportunities especially among marginalized communities.  This current release features nine new works for chorus. 

The pieces here gather together a host of choral styles that combine ancient and modern sensibilities.  Faith Zimmer’s Laus Trinitati incorporates a chant by Hildegard of Bingen now in more expanded harmonic lines.  Christopher H. Harris’ new setting of the classic spiritual Were You There? Provides unique challenges for the individual lines in some quite exquisite harmonic writing.  Some percussion are added to the title track, composed by Dominick DiOrio, in a meditative reflection on the divine.  This focus is part of the overall spiritual musical journey taken in the program here. 

At the center, we are invited to consider more social justice and injustices of our present day in Tides.  Reginald S. Wright’s piece incorporates violin and viola to help provide a musical delineation of the two sides of the polarization following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.  The piece has a more experimental nature at its heart, though the musical language is still quite accessible.  Out of this controversy, Harris’ Joy Never Leaves invites contemplation at how one recovers and moves on beyond these difficult moments to live in the world.  The ensemble’s interest in diverse musical styles is emphasized in the Hip-Hop influenced Elevate! By Lori C. Hicks who uses a variety of texts from R&B and Hip-Hop artists as well as common genre techniques in an engaging new work.  Building on a sense of improvisation, Erik Meyer’s The Gift to Sing invites the choir to explore their own melodic invention to help create a sense of individual story within the community.  The text he uses is by James Weldon Johnson, known for his hymn Lift Every Voice and Sing.  Lee R. Kesselman turns to a text by science fiction writer Ursula Le Guinn for Hymn to Time with interesting references to the passage of time with ticking sounds.  The album concludes with a gospel song, Worthy Of All Praise by Kevin B. James.

The chorus has a very rich quality that manages to achieve some of the rich harmonies called upon in this program.  There is a good blend of slightly contemporary pieces that invite reflection on the world at large coupled with more meditative moments.  It is a rather interesting blend of modern choral music that mostly has one foot firmly in the spiritual minimalist styles of ancient-modern expression.  The result is some quite beautiful music making in an engaging program, beautifully recorded.

The accompanying booklet provides all texts and brief information about each of the pieces included.  There is also information about the mission and ensemble.  One can see more at their site: elevatevocalarts.org.