Epic new Carmina Burana to challenge Tenebrae - 23.06.05

‘Evocative, mysterious and beguiling’ new work gets pulses racing pre-City of London Festival.

Joby Talbot’s forthcoming commission ‘Path of Miracles’, based on the Spanish pilgrimage ‘Santiago di Compostella, will be one of Tenebrae’s greatest challenges to date.

Heralded as ‘the most talked about new choir in Britain’ by The Times recently, Tenebrae has already developed a niche in candlelit, choreographed concerts using churches and sacred spaces around the world. Tackling new commissions and some of the toughest repertoire is nothing new to Tenebrae having already made great successes of Tavener’s ‘Mother and Child’, Short’s own ‘Dream of Herod’ and a number of other smaller works.

However, Short admits that this new work, with 17 different voice parts, promises to be a great new challenge for his ‘crack ensemble’. “It’s hard to put into just a few words what the music is like because there is so much variety” says Nigel Short, the group’s artistic director. “Bits of it are epic, reminding me of ‘Carmina Burana’!”

It is already sure that the work will be popular with the public as Short explains. “One particular melody is reminiscent of the middle-east in its harmony, evocative, mysterious and beguiling. It’s a tune we’ve all found ourselves humming hours, sometimes days after a rehearsal has finished. At times the music has an energetic, driving rhythm. At others it serenely floats by, dream-like and hypnotic, with lush, warm harmony underpinning it all.”

However, the main challenge will come from the vocal demands it puts on the 18 singers and will surely prove to be an exciting moment in Tenebrae’s history. “It is incredibly virtuosic for the singers and requires exceptional stamina both vocally and in terms of concentration. It reaches the extremes of their ranges too. It is also a linguistic challenge– medieval Galician, Spanish, Latin, German, medieval French, Greek, Basque and of course, some modern English.”

The world premiere and subsequent concerts take place at St. Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, London on the 7th July (at 18h00 and 20h30)- Box Office 0845 120 7502 & www.colf.org – and St. Peter Mancroft Church, Norwich on the 8th July (20h00)- Box Office tbc

‘Path of Miracles’ is due to be recorded during the summer and will be released later this year.