Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s Releases New CD: Music from the Left Coast
Enclosed please find a copy of a new CD, Music from the Left Coast, for your review.
Music from the Left Coast presents world-premiere recordings of four works commissioned by St. Matthew’s Music Guild. The orchestra, made up of top studio and freelance musicians in Los Angeles, has been in residence at St. Matthew's Church in Pacific Palisades for more than 25 years.
The recording contains music by Christopher Tin, Ola Gjeilo, Dwayne S. Milburn and Ross Wright and features the Soweto Gospel Choir of South Africa, clarinetist Patricia Massey, saxophonist Phil Feather, and the Left Coast Singers.
According to Christopher Tin, whose album Calling All Dawns and best selling single, Baba Yetu garnered two Grammys, the opening track, Waloyo Yamoni, “is a setting of a Lango rainmaking prayer. It wascommissioned by St. Matthew’s Music Guild with support from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and premiered in 2012.Musically, the piece uses a lot of the trademarks of African choral music, such as call-and-response, interplay between soloist and chorus, and improvisation. These are set within an episodic structure; one by one, motifs are introduced and developed, and then set aside until the recapitulation, where they all come crashing together in the grand finale.” Tin recorded the choral parts in South Africa and the tracks were digitally married to the orchestra’s recording in post-production.
Dwayne S. Milburn served as Composer-in-Residence at St. Matthew’s Music Guild prior to moving in 2010 to Washington D.C. where he was named Assistant Conductor of the U.S. Army Field Band. His Four Water Scenes for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra was written in 2007 in honor of the orchestra’s long-time Principal Clarinet, Patricia Massey. Milburn says “its four inter-connected movements represent a person caught in a playful rainstorm, gazing at the gentle ripples of a peaceful lake, taking an exhilarating trip down a river, and ending up adrift in the middle of the ocean.”
Norwegian-born Ola Gjeilo has become one of the most popular and sought-after composers of choral music of the past decade. “Kindred Spirits” was written in 2011 with funding from the MacTon Foundation. It is a setting of John Keats’ sonnet O! Solitude. Gjeilo writes, “Throughout the work, I strived to depict musically Keats’ poem in a way that is solemn, wistful, and, towards the end, with a playful lightness.” Los Angeles pianist Robert Thies is featured along with soprano Diane Plaster.
Ross Wright’s Concerto for Tenor Saxophone was commissioned in 2003 in honor of the orchestra’s Principal Oboist, Phil Feather. Feather is in high demand as a studio musician and doubles on all the reed instruments, including the members of the sax family. Wright says, “in spite of the use of classical forms, I wanted the piece to have an improvisatory quality. I also wanted to combine an edgy jazz feel with a refined classical sound. Knowing Phil’s abilities and the nimbleness of The Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s, I was sure they could pull off moving between the two worlds easily.