Isabella Burns, Krystel Dib, Greg Stout, Jeremy Powell, Westminster Williamson Voices, James Jordan & James Whitbourn - Aurora (2020)

This recording, which documents almost three years of research into improvisation in various forms, contains works for choral ensembles that create new sound worlds on their own. We are pleased to introduce to the world a young composer from our environment, Sam Scheibe. His virtuoso production O magnum mysterium presents a gifted and deeply insightful composer's voice. Sanctitude is an extensive improvisation that combines choir, soprano saxophone, Gregorian chant, Arabic chant and melodies into a sound world that I hope documents the frontier of a new world of choral performance. The techniques used in this improvisation are described in the new text Discovering Choral Improvisation through Chant (GIA, 2020).
The CD opens with the three-part work The Dreams That Remain by Thomas LaVoy, another composer from the Williamson Voices family, who adapted the sound world of this ensemble into a work of beauty and honesty. All the works on this CD create their own auroras that deeply touch us and cover our senses with streams of light. I thank my friend James Whitbourne for conducting three tracks and for creating the improvisation Sanctuary. Hopefully, the sounds on this CD, as Makoto Fujimara says, "will take you beyond yourself and make you look at the horizon [of life] and see beyond."