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by Bill Douglas and the Ars Nova Singers
Even though the CD album Earth Prayer by
Bill Douglas and the Ars Nova Singers (who are conducted by
Thomas Morgan) has been released by Hearts of Space under
the New Age music genre, it could be considered classical
or perhaps even jazz. This album moves through not only different
musical styles but also different emotional states from playful
to awesome reverence to joyful to soothingly peaceful.
There are 13 original compositions on this
CD by Bill Douglas, who also plays piano synthesizers and
bassoon. He has performed with the Toronto and New Haven symphonies
and his compositions have been performed by major orchestras
and chamber groups around the world. He has toured and recorded
jazz with vibraphonist Gary Burton. Douglas is currently at
Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where he has been teaching
for 22 years. This is his seventh album with the Hearts of
Space label.
The first track on this album is the title
cut, "Earth Prayer," which opens with the Ars Nova's
soaring angelic voices singing in Latin "Dona Nobis Pacem"
(grant us peace) and is then joined by violin and piano. This
piece is elegant and majestic and is worth the cost of the
CD by itself. The Ars Nova group also performs on four other
tracks, singing arrangements of poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson,
William Butler Yeats and Shelley.
This CD album can be ordered from Hearts
of Space, P.O. Box 31321, San Francisco, CA 94131.
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