SKYLARK VOCAL ENSEMBLE CHRISTMAS

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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The Skylark Vocal Ensemble ( http://www.skylarkensemble.org ) has added to its list of recordings, Winter’s Night, its inaugural album for the Christmas season. It is a gorgeously sung CD that contains a mix of Early and High Renaissance choral music side by side with 20th century sacred music by Hugo Distler, Herbert Howells, Pierre Villette, John Taverner, Reginald Jacques, Georges Dupuy de Meris, Peter Warlock and Elizabeth Poston.

The nearly fifty minutes of music of this perfectly engineered (by Andrew Carballeira) CD fly by, even after repeated hearings, and the well written notes by the group’s Artistic Director, Matthew Guard help guide the listener through the eighteen featured compositions.

The group is divided into four three-member sections. It is a small chamber ensemble but its sound is substantial at all dynamic levels, pure and unified, conservative in its use of the vibrato-less vocal production most often used and abused in the singing of Early Music, and yet its dozen voices are dead-on pitch, vibrant in timbre, and as proficient in the Latin of the Allegri, Nanino, Mouton and Plainchant samples, as they are in the German, French and English language selections.

The sopranos all do very fine ensemble and solo work, as evidenced by Sarah Moyer in two French-language hymns in praise of the Virgin Mother, and Jessica Petrus in the closing number by Elizabeth Poston. Mezzo-soprano delivers a lovely solo in Es ist ein Ros ensprungen.

An entire CD of this kind of music could grow tiresome in lesser hands, but track after track the hard-working artists of the Skylark Vocal Ensemble keep the listener immersed in their rich sound and musicality. both perfect for music ideally suited to a winter’s night.

Rafael de Acha

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”