Composer Jekabs Jancevskis is known in the Baltic countries but will be new for many listeners elsewhere. His music represents a major new development in the Baltic choral tradition that has remade the world of choral music since the 1970s. With its lush choral textures, slow-moving tempos, and open tonalities, it is rooted in Baltic holy minimalism, but it crosses boundaries in several compelling respects. Jancevskis, like Arvo Pärt, sets texts in a variety of languages: here Latvian, Polish, Latin, and English. He ...
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Composer Jekabs Jancevskis is known in the Baltic countries but will be new for many listeners elsewhere. His music represents a major new development in the Baltic choral tradition that has remade the world of choral music since the 1970s. With its lush choral textures, slow-moving tempos, and open tonalities, it is rooted in Baltic holy minimalism, but it crosses boundaries in several compelling respects. Jancevskis, like Arvo Pärt, sets texts in a variety of languages: here Latvian, Polish, Latin, and English. He incorporates nonmusical sounds into his rich choral textures: laughter, whispers, and whistles, as well as using chant-like settings. Jancevskis doesn't so much write sacred and secular pieces as call into question the distinction, with secular works like the magnificent Odplyw ("Ebb Tide") taking on deeply spiritual significance, and Latin motet settings filled with sensuous clusters and stacks. The longest and perhaps most striking work here is When, composed in 2016 to mark the 400th...
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