#VOCES8

[julesofnature]

Sing, Be, Live, See. This dark stormy hour, The wind, it stirs. The scorched earth cries out in vain: O war and power, You blind and blur, The torn heart cries out in pain.

But music and singing Have been my refuge, And music and singing Shall be my light. A light of song, Shining Strong: Alleluia! Through darkness, pain, and strife, I’ll Sing, Be, Live, See… Peace.

Frank Ticheli's 'Earth Song' 

[graveyarddirt]

01. Erland Cooper: With Silence (Mvt. 3) 02. Lili Holland-Fricke & Sean Rogan: dear alien 03. Sephine Llo: Rest With Me 04. NYX & Laura Misch: Hornbeam 05. Cosmo Sheldrake: Bathed In Sound 06. Aukai: Dream Stop 07. Gazelle Twin: Two Worlds - Keeley Forsyth Mix 08. Lucy Walker & VOCES8: O Nata Lux 09. Moor Mother: Dream Culture (Unclassified Live) 10. Kevin Fowley: Ne pleure pas, Jeannette

Expect to hear from emerging independent creators whose work plays with orchestral textures and classical form as well as the latest from a new generation of contemporary composers whose output is infused with the spirit of rock, pop and electronica.

[zestysthoughts]

Jacob Collier - Box of Stars Pts. 1 & 2

[agoodsongeveryday]

Day One Thousand One Hundred and Eighty Nine

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over. And what did I see I had not seen before? Only a question less or a question more; Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying. Tiresome heart, forever living and dying, House without air, I leave you and lock your door. Wild swans, come over the town, come over The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

[violet-ianthe]

May it Be - VOCES8, Enya

[audiophiliacfan]

On the floor of the airport in Idaho Falls Just me and the tile and the bathroom stalls Silent screams of my fear echoing off the walls Not the place that I thought I'd be losing it all Slowly, surely Night will turn to day Whisper softly You're gonna be okay For a while, I was dazed like my brain was a maze All the walls once familiar seemed to be rearranged Stuck inside of a body that wasn't my own Then you took my hand and you guided me home Slowly, surely Night will turn to day Whisper softly You're gonna be okay Yeah, sometimes I'm afraid of being afraid Then my fear makes me nauseous 'cause I fear throwing up But I think maybe that's what it means to be brave To feel all the fear and show up anyway Slowly, surely Night will turn to day Speak it with me You're gonna be okay You're gonna be okay You're gonna be okay Okay

[derlejoe]

Blake Morgan

sources:

facebook

bach-cantatas

soundcloud

voces8

youtube

opera today

[transboysoprano]

God dammit I feel like I need to talk about this. So, any of my other choral nuts may or may not know that VOCES8 is starting a new professional group in the United States. A treble ensemble. An ensemble like this is something that I've been waiting for since I've been in high school and I've been trying to act like it's not a big deal.

Lately, I’ve been really distant from my musician side and focusing a lot more on my trans side. It’s the off-season and I celebrated Pride Month really hard. Go figure. But it’s been so easy to pretend like I don’t have these degrees in vocal performance and vocal chamber music and that I’ve wanted to be in a full-time professional ensemble that previously didn’t exist since for me since I’ve been twelve years old.

It's a full-time professional choir for treble voices based in the United States run by my favorite choir of all time. For context, there are no full-time professional choirs that voices like mine can even be a part of in the United States right now. Only "men's choirs." If I weren't going through this vocal gender dysphoria thing right now, this would've been some thing I'd be foaming at the mouth for. It’s the thing I’ve always wanted, even tried to form myself. (I started a treble ensemble with the intention of growing it to professional level some years ago, but my rehearsal leadership skills are subpar so I asked a friend to direct for me, and she insisted it needed to be a “women only safe space” so I quit my own choir 🤦‍♂️ they’re still singing today and sound pretty good btw).

But anyway, I was hanging out with a friend today and told her about the whole thing and was pretty wishy-washy about whether I was going to audition or not, told her I’m this close to giving up on the dream of being a professional choral musician and taking the hormones and just starting my whole life over and not auditioning means I don’t have to keep trying to be a soprano and not transitioning because it’s what my adolescent self wanted for me, and got himself $60k in student loan debt for. I thought she’d get it but she basically chewed me out, saying that I really need to audition and try to make that dream a reality.

I need to make fourteen years of college and young artist programs and suffering through community choirs and trying to start my own professional groups pay off. I need to put to rest the yearning and crying over a dream that feels more like a death sentence these days. If I do this, then I will have done it. I want to be a part of this group so badly. I need them to accept me. I want to sing with them for as long as it makes sense, and then I can finally say all those years were worth it. My younger self can feel satisfied with the work I have done, I will have accomplished the task I set for myself when I was a child and didn’t know trans people existed, and then I can finally get the fuck on with the rest of my life. I can go to the gender clinic and get the testosterone and ruin my “beautiful” “god-given” “perfect” soprano voice and finally be fucking happy.

[tenebrius-excellium]

VOCES8 - “Earth Song” by Frank Ticheli

[krispyweiss]

Paul Simon Announces May 19 Arrival of Seven Psalms

- “This whole piece is really an argument I’m having with myself about belief or not,” songwriter says

Paul Simon was sleeping and dreaming when a voice came to him and said:

“You are working on a piece called ‘Seven Psalms.’”

That was early 2019. On May 19, 2023, Simon will release Seven Psalms, his first album of new material since 2016’s Stranger to Stranger. A companion film, “In Restless Dreams,” is also planned.

Following the initial dream, Simon would wake between 3:30 and 5 a.m. several times a week with lyrics coming to him. He set them to music and Seven Psalms was born.

“This is a journey for me to complete,” Simon says in a trailer for the forthcoming album. “This whole piece is really an argument I’m having with myself about belief or not.”

The five-minute promo teases music - songs like “The Lord,” “Your Forgiveness” and five others - as Simon sings: The Lord is my engineer/the Lord is my record producer; and hoping the gates won’t be closed before your forgiveness.

The instrumentation is exclusively acoustic with vocal accompaniment from VOCES8 and Simon’s wife, Edie Brickell.

Simon, 81, retired from touring in 2018.

4/12/23

[mrbacf]

VOCES8: Bogoroditse Devo by Sergei Rachmaninoff

[peaceandnature]

Going to see Voces8 on Thursday :)

[dolphelecat]

VOCES8: Zelda's Lullaby by Koji Kondo (arr. Jim Clements)

[imaginary-wanderer]

This is what the world should be made of instead of tyrants stealing lands and lives.