Daniel Taylor – The Tree of Life (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Daniel Taylor – The Tree of Life (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:59 minutes | 925 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

This album The Tree of Life follows Daniel Taylor’s successful 2015 album Four Thousand Winter.

Within this beautiful sequence of Christmas music ancient and modern we find a stillness that is central to the experience – an awakening. The Tree of Life takes the listener on a new journey drawing each of us through the notes and through the moments of silence between them. Here we remember and reflect, hope and give thanks.

These compositions span over two thousand years, from a sixth-century chant to the miraculous works of Parsons and Mouton to the remarkable compositions from today by Pärt, Britten and Tavener. Among the pieces we find the “Seven Antiphons” by Arvo Pärt, disarmingly impassioned, otherworldly; the extraordinary “Hymn to the Mother of God” by John Tavener, and Benjamin Britten’s transformative “Hymn to the Virgin”. In close kinship with these profound offerings, the restrained ecstasy of “Nesciens Mater” by Jean Mouton, the “Ave Maria” of Robert Parsons and the moving “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” by Elizabeth Poston, bring forth a sense of serene wonder.

Recorded in London, England with esteemed producer Nicholas Parker and bathed in the acoustics of Saint Augustine, The Tree of Life features the Trinity Choir including choristers from across Canada and members of the Tallis Scholars, the Gabrieli Consort and the Monteverdi Choir. These are magnificent interpretations that Daniel Taylor directs with passion and dedication.

The pure voices of The Trinity Choir include the best of today’s soloists from England’s choral and vocal stars: Jeremy Budd, tenor; Ellen McAteer, soprano; David Clegg, alto; Nicholas Pritchard, tenor; Alexander Dobson, bass; Charles Daniels, tenor. The album was recorded in London, England with esteemed producer Nick Parker and engineer Andrew Mellor.

The Trinity Choir heard on this recording is not the Choir of Trinity Church in New York or one of the other church-associated groups using this name, but a handpicked group assembled by Canadian countertenor and conductor Daniel Taylor in 2015. Like Taylor himself, some of the choir’s members have passed through such top-flight a cappella groups as the Tallis Scholars, the Sixteen, and the Monteverdi Choir of Taylor’s teacher, John Eliot Gardiner. The level of singing is about what you might expect from such personnel, and Taylor keeps a thread of energy moving through a CD’s worth of exclusively slow-moving material, no small feat. The nature of the program, however, is where Taylor moves beyond previous releases. This is a Christmas-season release; the Tree of Life of the title is Jesus Christ, referenced explicitly in Elizabeth Poston’s luminous Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. The framework of the program is provided by Arvo Pärt’s Seven Magnificat-Antiphonen of 1991, a set of pieces designed to be performed one per day prior to Christmas; they’re a bit more linear than most of Pärt’s other music, using cluster-like dissonances and then suddenly clarifying them in the service of textual ideas. Sample one of these (perhaps “O Adonai”) for the basic sound. Here, they are surrounded mostly by other works of holy minimalism (if you’re wondering who the “JoŸ Tavener” in the CD track list might be, he’s just an erroneously printed John Tavener). But Taylor reaches back to the Renaissance, reversing the usual proportion where Renaissance motets have contemporary pieces sprinkled along the way. This has a rather uncanny effect: the works by Jean Mouton and Robert Parsons deepen the contrapuntal texture a bit and seem to heighten the mode of reflection that is the unifying idea of the whole. The album ends with the monophonic hymn Veni, Veni Emmanuel, asserting in purer form the connection of contemporary minimalism to the earlier music of the church. The distance from the usual Christmas music conventions and the freshness of the program are so great that you might easily listen to this outside of the holiday season. Highly recommended.

Tracklist:
1-01. Daniel Taylor – Puer natus est (03:00)
1-02. Daniel Taylor – O Weisheit (01:45)
1-03. Daniel Taylor – O Adonai (02:40)
1-04. Daniel Taylor – Nesciens Mater (06:31)
1-05. Daniel Taylor – The Lamb (04:14)
1-06. Daniel Taylor – Hymn to the Virgin (04:06)
1-07. Daniel Taylor – O Spross (01:19)
1-08. Daniel Taylor – O Schlüssel (02:21)
1-09. Daniel Taylor – O Morgenstern (02:07)
1-10. Daniel Taylor – The Deer’s Cry (04:03)
1-11. Daniel Taylor – Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (03:46)
1-12. Daniel Taylor – Salvator Mundi (02:57)
1-13. Daniel Taylor – Ave Maria (04:59)
1-14. Daniel Taylor – O König (01:26)
1-15. Daniel Taylor – O Immanuel (03:13)
1-16. Daniel Taylor – Hymn to the Mother of God (02:53)
1-17. Daniel Taylor – Veni, Veni Emmanuel (04:32)

Personnel:
Daniel Taylor, countertenor
The Trinity Choir

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