Posted with kind permission of the administration.
Last time my choir came out with a CD, people seemed … indifferent. Hopefully this one holds a little more interest than a recording of the a cappella works of an obscure Edwardian Englishman.
The St. Louis Chamber Chorus, a professional group that I sing with, had recently released a new Christmas CD. Called Christmas from St. Louis, it features a handful of familiar carols (O Little Town of Bethlehem, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Away in a Manger and We Three Kings, sung to the American tunes), a few less familiar works by Virgil Thomson, Tchaikovsky and others, and several new works commissioned by the chorus, including a very impressive piece by Yakov Gubanov, one of the last students of Dmitri Shostakovich.
So far, the CD has been received very well by the international community, including being picked by Gramophone (one of the largest and most important classical music publications and review magazine in the world) as one of the Christmas picks of 2011.
If you’re interested, you can go here and listen to brief clips from the CD. Scroll down to read the reviews from Gramophone and a couple of others.
If you are interested in a cappella choral music, I suggest you check it out.