VOCES8 ‘After Silence’ album released

VOCES8 has released its 15th Anniversary double album on its own label with a beautifully produced booklet illustrated with contemporary artworks that add a visual dimension to the exploration of the themes.
“After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” – Aldous Huxley

In the essay from which the title After Silence is taken, Aldous Huxley offers his thoughts on the essential force of music. The most profoundly significant constituents of our being, he says, include our responses to beauty, pleasure, pain, ecstasy and death. These can best be ‘experienced, not expressed’ through silence, and after silence, through music.

The four releases that make up After Silence are here associated with the four classical elements, earth, fire, air and water:
Remembrance, invoking death, loss and the return to earth;
Devotion, focusing on the flames of love, sacred and secular;
Redemption, celebrating rebirth and the renewed breath of life;
Elemental, returning us to the ebb and flow of nature.

Listen to After Silence on Spotify here, and Apple Music here.
Buy the beautiful double album here.

On August 1st, the group will be singing a selection of music from the double album in the first concert of the Live From London festival. Music includes the 2 pieces written especially for VOCES8, Vertue by Jonathan Dove and An Elemental Elegy by Mårten Jansson and poetry from Charles Anthony Silvestri.

All of VOCES8’s sheet music publishing is with Edition Peters here.

Apollo5 new EP “Where All Roses Go” released

Where All Roses Go – EP Vol. 1

To mark the tenth Anniversary of Apollo5, the group has recorded 3 digital EPs which will form the album “Where All Roses Go”. The first EP is released now!

EP Vol.1 Track List:

1. Veni Domine – Francisco Guerrero

2. This Marriage – Eric Whitacre

3. Civitas sancti tui – William Byrd

4. Mother of God, here I stand – John Tavener

5. Edo Lullaby – trad. Japanese arr. Paul Smith

Two further digital EPs will be released over the coming months and the full album will be released in the new year. The album will be a digital and physical release.

See how and where to stream and download the album here. Buy the physical album here.

The whole album explores that most complex human emotion: love.

Love has many different manifestations. It is a rich tapestry intricately woven with conflicting strands: life and loss; beauty and mortality; brave romance and fragility in rejection; the steadfast devotion of a mother’s love (heightened by the awareness of inevitable separation); and in the Christian narrative the Virgin Mary and the eventual ultimate sacrifice.

The repertoire chosen for this first EP reflects love in a variety of these strands. This Marriage, by Eric Whitacre is a beautiful setting of an extract of a poem by Rumi which is a blessing for love within a marriage. Both Veni Domine by Francisco Guerrero and Civitas Sancti Tui by William Byrd speak of God’s redeeming love in the face of human despair. Mother of God, by John Tavener and Edo Lullaby, arr. by Paul Smith reflect the love of the Mother: the first as a prayer to the Virgin Mary and the second a lullaby sung by a mother to her child.

The cover artwork and title refer to that most potent symbol of love and its transience: the rose. Apollo5 explores this idea through a varied collection of repertoire spanning 500 years and several musical styles. The release includes works by composers as broad-ranging as Josquin des Prez, Francisco Guerrero, Eric Whitacre, John Taverner, Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc, Gerald Finzi and Michael McGlynn. The programme also features arrangements written especially for Apollo5 (including pop songs by Elton John and Seal) and several new commissions from contemporary composers such as David Fawcett, Paul Smith, Taylor Davis and Fraser Wilson.

Apollo5 unites this diverse collection of choral music, from some of the earliest known polyphonic writing through to the world of pop, in an energetic exploration of the joy and despair of human love.

Apollo5 is part of the VOCES8 Foundation.

VOCES8 album release After Silence III – Redemption

VOCES8 has released the latest part of their “After Silence” project. This is the third offering, called Redemption.

Track listing:
1. Spaséñiye, sodélal – Pavel Chesnokov
2. The Long Road – Ēriks Ešenvalds
3. Rückert Lieder: No. 4, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen – Gustav Mahler
Featuring Mary Bevan, soprano and Nick Deutsch, oboe
4. The Road Home – Stephen Paulus
5. Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150 – J. S. Bach
Featuring the Academy of Ancient Music

Redemption is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

New VOCES8 EP release: ‘Devotion’

After Silence is the celebration of VOCES8‘s 15th anniversary. Successive online EPs released in four chapters – Remembrance, Devotion, Redemption and Elemental – will be followed by After Silence, a double album with a beautifully produced booklet, illustrated with contemporary artworks and illuminating notes that add an extra dimension to the exploration of the themes.

Devotion has a dual aspect: religious observance or divine worship, on the one hand; the fact of being deeply attached to a beloved object, on the other. These sacred and secular passions provide inspiration for the transcendent harmonies displayed in the selection of works that make up the second part of After Silence, reflecting on love, death and the life of the spirit.

RepertoireA Boy and a Girl  Eric Whitacre
The Three Kings  Jonathan Dove
Lully, Lulla, Lullay  Philip Stopford
Lagrime d’amante al sepolcro dell’amata  Claudio Monteverdi
Jesus bleibet meine Freude BWV 147  Johann Sebastian Bach

Pre-order or stream Devotion here!

Apollo5 USA Winter tour 2020

Vocal ensemble Apollo5 are on their latest USA tour! The 6-date trip takes them from San Francisco to Chicago:

20th February, 2020 Palo Alto, California

21st February, 2020 San Francisco, California

23rd February, 2020 Albuquerque, New Mexico

26th February, 2020 Chicago, Illinois

28th February, 2020 Kalamazoo, Michigan

1st March, 2020 Detroit, Michigan

The mixed repertoire programming includes The Skye Boat Song – arranged by Fraser Wilson, which you can see in a great new video here. The song is also included in the new album O Radiant Dawn.

Apollo5 is one of the ensembles making up the VOCES8 Foundation.

VOCES8 end of year round-up

VOCES8 is heading into a well-deserved holiday after an intense touring period. Since the start of the season in September they have been in the UK, Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Italy, the USA, Canada, recorded for audio and video, and given workshops at practically every town or city they have appeared in. They have also enjoyed the release of 3 arrangements of music by Olafur Arnalds which has been a phenomenal success. See a video of one of the tracks, called Momentary, here. The group has also released the first of 4 recordings making up its 15th Anniversary project called After Silence, which has a microsite here.

Their last video of the year is a beautiful recording of Jonathan Rathbone’s carol The Oxen, which you can see here.

At the start of 2020 the group can look forward to much more touring and teaching – all dates appear at www.voces8.com/tour.

VOCES8 new album: After Silence

As a celebration of VOCES8‘s 15th Anniversary the ensemble has released the first of 4 EP releases which go to make up the “After Silence” project. The first release comes under the heading of Remembrance:

• Drop, Drop, Slow Tears – Orlando Gibbons

• The Deer’s Cry – Arvo Pärt

• Bring Us O Lord God – William Harris

• Ne Irascaris Domine – William Byrd

• Civitas Sancti Tui – William Byrd

• There Is An Old Belief – Charles H. Parry

• Pie Jesu – Gabriel Fauré arr. Barnaby Smith

The releases that make up After Silence are associated with the four classical elements, earth, fire, air and water:
Remembrance, invoking death, loss and the return to earth;
Devotion, focusing on the flames of love, sacred and secular;
Redemption, celebrating rebirth and the renewed breath of life;
Elemental, returning us to the ebb and flow of nature.

These successive online releases will be followed by After Silence, a double album with a beautifully produced booklet, illustrated with contemporary artworks that add a visual dimension to the exploration of the themes. Exalted, vital and freed from their original contextual restraints, the choral works showcased in this project have been carefully compiled for their thematic power and inexhaustible capacity to express the inexpressible.

Find out more at voces8aftersilence

VOCES8’s season 2019-2020

VOCES8 has another exciting season ahead with over 125 concerts around the world (tour schedule is here), combined with extensive education work, and plenty of audio and video releases ahead. The highlights of the season are laid out below.

The group’s Foundation is now re-named the VOCES8 Foundation, alongside the VOCES8 Centre, and record label VOCES8 Records.