Page 68 - CJMay2026

Record ed Sound Reviews
Recorded Sound Reviews

tifully by the Glee Club. The texts speak to the im- ate on Legends and Legacies, including a lovely setting by
mutable power of friendship, which is a perfect context Dr. Brandon Williams, Patrick Gardner’s successor as
for building camaraderie and trust within a collegiate director of choral activities at Rutgers University. The
choral ensemble. scope of this album may be immense, but it does ex-
Rutgers Kirkpatrick Choir performed the a cappella tremely well to encapsulate the achievements of Gard-
version of Arnold Schönberg’s Friede auf Erden at the ner and the Rutgers choral program during his tenure.
2016 Eastern ACDA Region Conference in Boston. Legends and Legacies is a journey to the absolute heights
Their impressive mastery of this capstone work is high- of university choral singing and a collection that war-
lighted in this section of the album, along with works rants intentional listening.
by three other towering figures of twentieth-century
music: Luigi Dallapiccola, Olivier Messiaen, and Elliott John Guarente
Carter. Though not as thoroughly avant-garde as his Professor of Choral Ensembles & Music Theory
serial works, Messiaen’s O Sacrum Convivium! is every bit South Puget Sound Community College
as chromatic and challenging as Friede auf Erden. The
sopranos of Kirkpatrick Choir once again navigate the
outer edges of their register with relative ease in this Where Waters Meet
piece and in Dallapiccola’s Il coro delle malmaritate, which Canadian Chamber Choir
undergoes a wide range of emotions and styles in a sin- Julia David, Conductor
gle movement. To round out this set, Rutgers Glee Club Sherryl Sewepagaham, Soloist
gives a rousing performance of Elliott Carter’s propul- 2024; 41:25
sive Tarantella in classical Latin, deftly accompanied on
four-hands piano by Brian Katona and Sohee Lee. The Anishinaabekwe environmentalist Winona
The record continues with two evocative works by LaDuke wrote that “Water is life. We are the people
the late Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lewis Sprat- who live by the water. Pray by these waters. Travel by
lan. In the three movements of Travels, the poetry de- the waters. Eat and drink from these waters. We are
scribes such disparate scenes as the antics of Australian related to those who live in the water.” This declara-
kangaroos and the momentary fascination of reading tion is at the heart of Where Waters Meet, a recording
someone’s name written in window condensation on by the Canadian Chamber Choir (CCC) that fuses
a New Jersey train. Rutgers Glee Club is well suited Canadian composer Carmen Braden’s five-movement
to the divergent styles required for this piece, and Paul eponymous work from 2019 with Indigenous chants/
Conrad’s piano playing is virtually seamless. In New En- improvisations by Sherryl Sewepagaham and “Sun on
gland Concordance, Gardner once again draws contrasting Water,” a 2015 piece by Hussein Janmohamed. Where
methods of vocal production from the tenor-bass choir. Waters Meet—itself the culmination of several collabo-
After the elegiac first movement, the Glee Club engages rations between the CCC, under the direction of Julia
in a twangy, shape-note manner of singing, as called David, and a multitude of culture bearers throughout
for by the composer. This is both historically informed Canada—documents their desire to “learn from In-
and a stirring experience for the listener. Rutgers Kirk- digenous ways of knowing…[and] a commitment to a
patrick Choir follows with Two Emily Dickinson Settings deeper understanding of historical context and build-
by Tarik O’Regan. These a cappella works make use ing collaborative relationships with Indigenous artists
of sustained pedal points with rich divisi gathering in and elders.”
the upper voices. Kirkpatrick choir employs a more This recording excels in uniting diverse repertoire
straight-toned approach here, helping the singers main- into a single, cohesive product. Braden describes her
tain unwavering intonation in these highly dissonant composition, which serves as the album’s framework,
movements. as one that “considers water as a symbol of a parallel
There are still more great performances to appreci- journey—as a reminder of life and lives, as a call for ac-

66 CHORAL JOURNAL May 2026 Volume 66 Number 8