VOCES8 and Eric Whitacre – Home – Double Vinyl Records

Description

VOCES8 and Eric Whitacre – Home – Double Vinyl Records

Home brings Eric Whitacre’s choral writing into the close focus of VOCES8, an ensemble whose clarity and blend make small changes of harmony especially revealing. Released in 2023, the album gathers several shorter works before moving into The Sacred Veil, the substantial cantata that occupies most of the program. Whitacre’s music often depends on the relationship between a single line and the larger sonority surrounding it, and these performances allow that relationship to remain audible. The result is intimate in scale even when the emotional subject matter becomes considerable, with the individual words retaining a place inside the sustained sound.

The opening works provide several different entrances into Whitacre’s writing. “Go, Lovely Rose” reaches back to his early development as a composer, while “The Seal Lullaby” shows his ability to make a gentle melodic shape carry a rich harmonic setting. “Sing Gently,” originally written for a virtual choir project during lockdown, brings the idea of collective singing into a more concentrated ensemble performance. “All Seems Beautiful to Me,” based on Walt Whitman, adds another perspective on human connection. Together these pieces establish the album’s balance of delicacy, warmth and careful attention to the meaning of a text.

The Sacred Veil changes the scale of the listening experience. Its twelve movements follow words by Charles Anthony Silvestri, shaped by his relationship with his wife Julie and her death from ovarian cancer. The subject moves through love, family, illness and grief, giving Whitacre a sequence in which private experiences can unfold gradually rather than being summarized in one dramatic statement. Pianist Christopher Glynn and cellist Emma Denton extend the vocal sound, supplying colors and lines that remain closely integrated with the choir. The instrumental contributions are part of the narrative’s emotional pacing, not simply an accompaniment placed beneath it.

Movements such as “In a Dark and Distant Year,” “Magnetic Poetry” and “Wherever There Is Birth” establish the life surrounding the later loss. “I’m Afraid,” “Dear Friends” and “You Rise, I Fall” then allow the language and harmony to become more exposed. The music’s sustained clusters can suggest states of uncertainty or suspended time, while a clearer phrase can provide a moment of direct human contact. “Child of Wonder” closes the work with a different kind of tenderness. The power comes from the accumulation of those changes rather than a constant attempt to make every movement sound climactic.

This double vinyl edition presents the complete sixteen-track Home program, including all twelve movements of The Sacred Veil. It offers a broad encounter with Whitacre’s music while keeping VOCES8’s particular sound at the center. The smaller ensemble encourages attention to diction, balance and the changing color of a held chord, qualities that matter greatly in these works. Home is especially absorbing when heard as a complete sequence, moving from the concise opening pieces toward a longer meditation in which musical detail and the experience of love, illness and remembrance become closely intertwined.

Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic

Track Listing

Go, Lovely Rose
The Seal Lullaby
Sing Gently
All Seems Beautiful to Me
The Sacred Veil I: The Veil Opens
The Sacred Veil II: In a Dark and Distant Year
The Sacred Veil III: Home
The Sacred Veil IV: Magnetic Poetry
The Sacred Veil V: Wherever There Is Birth
The Sacred Veil VI: I’m Afraid
The Sacred Veil VII: I Am Here
The Sacred Veil VIII: Delicious Times
The Sacred Veil IX: One Last Breath
The Sacred Veil X: Dear Friends
The Sacred Veil XI: You Rise, I Fall
The Sacred Veil XII: Child of Wonder