His Majesties Clerkes

This critically acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble is one of the few choirs in America that specializes in historically informed performances of Renaissance masterworks, yet has the versatility to present 19th- and 20th-century music in convincing performances. Since its debut in 1982, the ensemble has expanded its repertory and won itself a steadily growing audience. Distinguished guest conductors who have led the group include Sir David Willcocks, Simon Preston, and Paul Hillier, who in 1990 chose His Majestic's Clerkes to join with The Hilliard Ensemble in the first American performances of Arvo Part's St. John Passion.

HMC was founded in 1982 by countertenor Richard Childress, whose aim was to perform early choral music at a professional level ("clerk" was the term for a professional choral singer in Renaissance England). Early on, Childress and Co-Director Anne Heider decided to expand the repertory to music of all eras and to include music of the Americas. In 1989 Anne Heider became Artistic Director.

Since 1982, HMC has presented a yearly concert series that brings both familiar and unusual choral music to Illinois audiences in performances of the highest professional caliber. In 1987 HMC began its ongoing series of concerts with distinguished guest conductors such as Paul Hillier, Sir David Willcocks, and Alice Parker. These performances have expanded the artistic horizons of HMC's singers as well as its audience. Dedication to 20th-century music has led HMC to commission and premier works by many contemporary composers such as Frank Ferko, Daniel Tucker, Gustavo Leone, and Eric Reese.

HMC seeks to encourage the composition of a cappella choral works by North American composers through a competition which it sponsors jointly with Frank Warren Music, a Boston-area publisher with a special interest in contemporary works. First prize includes performance in HMC's concert series. Recent winners include: Leonard Enns for Most glorious Lord of Lyfe; Tully J. Cathey for Trilogy: Homage to Edgar Allan Poe; and Patricia Van Ness for Cor mei cordis. In addition to its own concert season, the ensemble has been sought out by the American Choral Directors Association, the American Musicological Society, Chamber Music Chicago, and the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series.

HMC is featured regularly on NPR's "Performance Today," and has been recorded for re-broadcast numerous times by Chicago's WFMT. Its compact disc recordings have been favorably reviewed in national and international journals. In 1990, HMC was awarded NPR's Lucien Wulsin Award for best small ensemble.

Billings - Early American Choral Music Vol 1

William Billings (1746-1800), a Boston tanner and self-taught composer & singing master, was the foremost of a group of New England Psalmodists who flourished in the early years of American political independence. By the time his first tunebook, "The New England Psalm Singer," appeared in print in 1770, Billings had mastered both small and large-scale forms. The fine British a cappella choral group His Majestie's Clerkes does full justice to this wonderfully melodic, rich-harmonied Christian church music. Included are 16 songs: "O Praise the Lord of Heaven," "Is any afficted," "Emmaus," "Africa" (a personal favorite), funeral anthem: "Samuel the Priest," the joyful " Shiloh" (another favorite), "Jordan," the wonderful "I am the Rose of Sharon," "Euroclydon," "Hear my Pray'r," "Rutland," "David's lamentation," the sweet fugue "As the Hart panteth," "Creation," the powerful, dramatic "Brookfield," and the Easter Anthem: "The Lord is ris'n indeed" (the strongest song on the CD). This is incredible stuff, and looking for comparisons, what comes to mind are the choruses from Handel's "Messiah"--but we're hearing these songs for the first time, and we're being treated to the work of a little-known American genius. Highly recommended!

6924 CD $11.98

Billings - Early American Choral Music Vol 2

A fascinating survey of almost three centuries of communal singing, performed with sweetness, devotion and even a touch of earthy enthusiasm where required.

6925 CD $11.98

Frank Ferko - Stabat Mater

Composer Frank Ferko's majestic new Stabat Mater (The Mother Stood) broadens the embrace of this profound medieval hymn depicting Mary at the Crucifixion. Ferko supplements the original Latin text on the theme of premature death with passages from classical Greek drama and modern verse. Ferko (b. 1950) composed his Stabat Mater in 1998 for the a capella mixed choir His Majestie's Clerkes. The Chicago Tribune pronounced their concert premiere of Ferko's Stabat Mater a classical highlight of 1999: "a marvelously intricate and sincerely devout tour de force that showed off the Clerke's disciplined, sensitive, and uncommonly nuanced singing." Writer Ted Shen asked rhetorically, "When will Frank Ferko be recognized for what he is, a talented and erudite innovator of old vocal genres?" With his fugal writing, Ferko "plays" the choir like an organ. Not surprisingly, Ferko is a veteran church organist and choral director as well as composer. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Northwestern University, where he studied with Alan Stout. The work consists of 25 miniature pieces (20 Latin stanzas and five English interpolations) "that fit together much like a mosaic," Ferko writes in the CD booklet. Musically, the composition employs "old-fashioned" concepts: tonal centers, church modes, major and minor keys, counterpoint, and melody. The music digresses occasionally, "but there is a basic tonal framework for the entire composition," Ferko writes. He describes the tonal center as progressing through two "arches," from E to B-flat and from B-flat back to E --"and beyond, in the final chorale."

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His Majesties Clerkes

Billings - Early American Choral Music Vol 1

Billings - Early American Choral Music Vol 2

Frank Ferko - Stabat Mater

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