Well, my Wonder Woman had a couple of small surprises up her sleeves, I suppose because Barnes & Noble wasn’t as quick to deliver as Amazon.com was (similar packages ordered at virtually the same time–the B&N actually first–arrived at hugely different times). Listening to one right now, Yo-Yo Ma & Friends: Songs of Joy and Peace, and enjoying the living daylights out of it. Have to do it in my office with the door shut, of course, since I like music at performance levels. It doesn’t mean I actually get the air movement of a live performance, but it’s closer than listening at “background music” levels, as far too many people do. But–even more “of course”–it’s worlds and worlds better than people who listen to stuff at excessively loud levels that are impossible without electronic amplification taken to its most hideous extreme.
Of the 22 cuts on the album, I count only two that I will NOT rip for storing on my mp3 player. That’s moderately to partly amazing, but then Yo-Yo Ma has made some amazingy musical decisions in both pieces to include and arrangements/performances of those pieces–few of which he uses as a showcase for his own considerable talent and skill on the cello. In fact, one of the ensemble pieces featuring Yo-Yo Ma, Dave Brubeck and Matt Brubeck is pretty wonderful itself, simply for the ensemble work of the two cellists playing together (No, Dave Brubeck doesn’t play cello :-)).
Really nice stuff–especially all the varied treatments of Dona Nobis Pacem, long one of my all time favs. Do yourself a favor and check this album out. Next up, The Priests. We’ll see how they fare…
Remarkably well. I didn’t want to see the PBS program earlier, because of several reasons, so all I knew of this buncha guys was what had come out in Mass Media Podpeople comments. Since Mass Media Podpeople are universally idiots, that was no help. Not bad voices (OK, very, very good, though not to the quality of Placido Domingo or Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, et al), very good arrangements and choral/instrumental performances. Sucker that I am for well-performed vocal and choral music, I know I’ll spend a lot of time with this one.
OK, one vocal observation: one of the guys has a “covered” quality to his tone that I really, really do not like, but when they sing in ensemble it’s OK. It’s not a fundamental quality of his mechanism, but an acquired habit that could be trained out of his performances and ought to be, IMO, but probably won’t be. *sigh* It’s particularly objectionable at the beginning of “Pie Jesu” and “O Holy Night”, but even at other places in other pieces it stands out like a sore thumb. Oh. Well. His voice–and the group’s quality–would be so very much better without it, but I can live with the group’s sound as a whole very easily. Nice stuff. Very, very nice.
(OK, one more slight quibble: at times the instrumental conductor commits some inexcusable acts of mis-phrasing during a few instrumental interludes. [A woodwind interlude in “Abide With Me” is a glaring examle.] Always, always, always: during instrumental passages that revisit vocal passages with lyrics, the instruments should “SING the lyrics” as it were, not be phrased independently of the lyric content of the words they’re echoing or anticipating! *sheesh* An inexcusable lapse by the instrumental conductor, but thankfully a rare occrrence in this album. Still, in part because it is rare, it really stands out and detracts from a few performances.)
I’d also like to rap the producer (and perhaps the instrumental conductor) on the knuckles for the (very few) times the instruments obscure the voices to the point of very nearly erradicating words sung but barely hearable. Bad. But fortunately rare.
These cavils aside, I really, really enjoy this album, and I’d be happy to purchase others by The Priests in the future.