Program Notes

I am pleased to be presenting the music of these three outstanding composers on the opening concerts of Bella Voce’s 2011-2012 season and on our first CD release under my direction. This music fits snugly into Bella Voce’s core aesthetic: performing new music with direct connection to the ancient.

Gabriel Jackson’s ties to the Tudor-era composers go back to his days as a treble in the Canterbury Cathedral Choir, where he sang the music of those masters daily. The affinity and connection to this music, as I see it, are twofold: Jackson uses and manipulates the compositional techniques and language of modality, isorhythm, and voice-leading of the Tudor era; and he strives for a clarity of expression that is both sonically rich but straightforward. Hearing Jackson’s music, one gets the impression that if functional harmony and monody were never introduced, the tradition of a particularly Tudor counterpoint might have evolved, eventually, in something like this.

The music of Frank Ferko has been heard in live performances and radio broadcasts around the world. Hailed by critics as a master of text setting and composing for a cappella vocal ensembles, Ferko is one of the most sought-after composers of new choral music today, and his works have been performed by some of the most highly regarded choral ensembles and vocal soloists of our time. Bella Voce, in its former incarnation as His Majestie’s Clerkes, commissioned the Hildegard Motets.

An accomplished composer, conductor and lecturer, Eric Whitacre has become one of the most popular and performed composers of his generation. The Los Angeles Times has praised his compositions as "works of unearthly beauty and imagination, [with] electric, chilling harmonies," while The Philadelphia Inquirer has called him "the hottest thing in choral music." Whitacre recently experimented with social media, tremendously successfully, with a YouTube Virtual Choir in recordings of several of his works. His anthem, Sleep, had a reported 2,052 singers from 58 countries participating online.