It would be something of a stretch to describe this CD as a crossover album, but it does take material that was written for a particular pop-oriented ensemble sound and transfer it to a subtly different classical ensemble. Glass wrote Part Four of Another Look at Harmony for the vocalists of the Philip Glass Ensemble and electric organ, and here it's performed by the British Choir of the 21st Century, a much larger group, accompanied by a traditional pipe organ. Conductor Howard Williams handles the challenge of his choir ...
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It would be something of a stretch to describe this CD as a crossover album, but it does take material that was written for a particular pop-oriented ensemble sound and transfer it to a subtly different classical ensemble. Glass wrote Part Four of Another Look at Harmony for the vocalists of the Philip Glass Ensemble and electric organ, and here it's performed by the British Choir of the 21st Century, a much larger group, accompanied by a traditional pipe organ. Conductor Howard Williams handles the challenge of his choir singing nearly continuously for an hour by staggering the voices so the entire ensemble isn't singing together (except, perhaps, at the work's climax). The sound is seamless and the listener is never aware of the constitution of the sound changing. Even so, if only 16 of the 32 members are singing at any given time, it's still a considerably more substantial group than Glass' ensemble and the sound is consistently fuller. Williams does a good job keeping the voices from sounding...
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