In 2023, the Phoenix Chorale presented a program titled “Soundtrack,” which artistic director Christopher Gabbitas describes as being designed to highlight various aspects of humanity: some positive, some joyful, some negative, and everything in between. In fact, Gabbitas says it is crafted to provoke different reactions from the audience, allowing them to achieve various states of emotion throughout the journey.
Works on this program range from traditional Shaker and Irish folk songs and African-American spirituals, to music created in the Soviet Union that embodies a “singing revolution,” a handful of jazz standards and jazz-inspired music, and works by living composers like Caroline Shaw, Trent Reznor, and Jennifer Lucy Cook. We’ll hear this concert from May of 2023 on this re-air of Arizona Encore.
Featured in this episode:
African American Spiritual – Witness – with Danya Tiller, soprano; Jacob Verhine, tenor; Toby Vaughn Kidd, bass
Traditional Shaker Song – Peace
Shaw – and the swallow
Cook – They Are Mother – with Jennifer Lucy Cook, piano
Tormis – Pärismaalase Lauluke
Edenroth – Words
Reznor – Hurt – with Lies’l Hill, soprano
Cook – Three Songs by Early American Women Composers
- I. Star of Columbia
- II. Promised Land
- III. lo dello: the dance
Porter – Miss Otis Regrets – with Christina Hall, soprano
Ellington – It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing
Irish Folksong – Carrickfergus
