The holiday season for 2020 brought this nicely recorded release by the Choral Scholars of University College, Dublin, and listeners in search of something different from the usual output of British collegiate and cathedral choirs will find it here. The sound is fresh in numerous ways, and so is the program. The choir is relatively young, having been founded in 1999. The singers are mixed-gender undergraduates who study choral singing intensively; they are capable of great control but maintain an admirable freshness, and ...
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The holiday season for 2020 brought this nicely recorded release by the Choral Scholars of University College, Dublin, and listeners in search of something different from the usual output of British collegiate and cathedral choirs will find it here. The sound is fresh in numerous ways, and so is the program. The choir is relatively young, having been founded in 1999. The singers are mixed-gender undergraduates who study choral singing intensively; they are capable of great control but maintain an admirable freshness, and under the leadership of Desmond Earley, they vary their sound effectively according to what they are singing, and best of all, the material gives them plenty of chances to show off their chops in this respect. One might expect a pro forma group of carols and Renaissance pieces, giving way in the second half to Irish material, but quite the contrary: the program is a set of pieces from varied countries and cultures -- British, American, Russian -- sequenced in a subtle and sophisticated...
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