The music of composer Tarik O'Regan is determinedly eclectic, with British, North African, and American sources of various kinds. Among its uniquely fascinating aspects is that he draws on the British choral tradition in which he was trained without being fully part of it. This collection of choral pieces gives a good idea of the variety of his style, and the performances by California's Pacific Chorale under director Robert Istad add a new dimension, with a fine, warm acoustic. The program consists of religious works and ...
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The music of composer Tarik O'Regan is determinedly eclectic, with British, North African, and American sources of various kinds. Among its uniquely fascinating aspects is that he draws on the British choral tradition in which he was trained without being fully part of it. This collection of choral pieces gives a good idea of the variety of his style, and the performances by California's Pacific Chorale under director Robert Istad add a new dimension, with a fine, warm acoustic. The program consists of religious works and pieces, drawn from various kinds of poetry that might be called spiritual. O'Regan has a strong ear for poetry like John Rutter, but his tonal palette is both more diverse and more bracing. Some of the pieces here are short, lyrical works of a transparent vein; try "I Listen to the Stillness of You," a lovely D.H. Lawrence setting excerpted from a larger work for an ideally stable conclusion. Ecstasies Above, a setting Edgar Allan Poe, has a complex texture, including two vocal...
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