Choral Arts Initiative: Tapestry of Becoming
Choral Arts Initiative

As intimated by its title, Choral Arts Initiative's third full-length takes as its primary theme transformation, but the recording branches into other related areas too, among them self-discovery, self-acceptance, and resilience. Contrast is plentiful, as it naturally would be when works by eight composers are featured, many of the pieces world premiere recordings of choral works commissioned by the award-winning company. While earlier Choral Arts Initiative (CAI) releases gave the spotlight to Jeffrey Derus (From Wilderness: A Meditation on the Pacific Crest Trail) and Dale Trumbore (How to Go On: The Choral Works of Dale Trumbore), the new one augments pieces by them with ones by Derrick Skye, Juhi Bansal, Aaron Manswell, Iván Enrique Rodríguez, Ayanna Woods, and Kile Smith. Put simply, one comes away from Tapestry of Becoming uplifted and restored.

Led by Artistic Director and CAI founder Brandon Elliott, the Orange County, California-based ensemble has to date commissioned twenty-five compositions and premiered more than 100 works; as important are the values of unity and acceptance the company promotes through its programming and community activities. As critical is its commitment to emerging composers, something wholly exemplified by those whose works grace its latest release. Where many of the pieces are pure vocal expressions, others complement the singers with piano and, in Skye's case, synthesizers and electronics.

Derus's contribution to the project is but three minutes long, but The House of Belonging nevertheless provides a stirring entryway into this superb collection. The immaculate textural beauty of the company's voices—five sopranos, six altos, six tenors, and seven basses—immediately asserts itself in this overture, the poignancy of the music matched by text by David Whyte that celebrates self-acceptance. In Fear (Becoming the Ocean), Bansal uses the image of a river seeping into the ocean as a metaphor for overcoming fear as one stands at the precipice before bravely embracing change. For this Khalil Gibran-inspired setting, Bansal exploits daringly chromatic melodic progressions and innovative vocal effects as voices dynamically swoop and swell in a manner suggestive of water flow.

With altoist Genie Hossain at the forefront, the singers evoke a barren, windswept landscape in Trumbore's ethereal tone painting Heart Butte, Montana. The composer writes that Smoker's text “embodies a landscape that initially appears unforgiving, but ultimately offers a chance to find a way home,” impressions mirrored in a musical design whose tone changes from foreboding to hopeful. With Phillip Matsuura's piano accompanying the singers, Rodríguez's hymn-like Blessed Be! expresses gratitude with open-hearted sincerity and poetic words (“In your sleep, may peace guide your dreams / Through the day, may you enjoy sweet harmony”). The pianist also helps buoy Manswell's soulful Stick with Love, whose title derives from words by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “I have decided to stick with love / Hate is too great a burden to bear.” With cellist Eddie Yue and percussionist Marcus Carline joining Matsuura and the singers, Woods' To Propagate a Home presents a powerful ode to faith and toil.

Two of the pieces are multi-movement, the first Skye's four-part all becomes the infinite, which treats nature phenomena as metaphors for transformation. The first part, “a seed embraced,” arrests for grounding the vocal part with bass synthesizer, after which “a river's journey,” adopting the concept Bansal used in his own piece, builds on the vocal arrangement with percussive plucks and other accents. A gospel feel and claps animate the call-and-response of “a flame ignites”; a quasi-funk rhythm base and fluttering electronics, on the other hand, help lend the concluding “in molten core” propulsion. At album's end, Smith's embracing Where Flames a Word advances through three towering movements whose texts by Paul Celan speak to the abundant richness of human experience. The hush of its central “Conversation in the Mountains” part presents merely one more example of the ensemble's magnificent vocal blend.

April 2024