Evocation Ii, For Organ

French composer Jean-Louis Florentz (1947-2004) was a prolific student of Olivier Messiaen. Debout Sur Les Soleil composed in 1990 is an exciting addition to the Organ repertoire. Florentz's music is described as having 'a strong evocative power which keeps the clarity of the French style.' A typical performance of Debout Sur Les Soleil Ressurection song for Organ lasts about 25 minutes. It is a virtuosic and modern piece yet provides organists with an exciting alternative performance work. For all advanced organists seeking to vary their repertoire Florentz'sDebout Sur Les Soleil makes for an exciting addition to the repertoire.

Hilary Tann's Embertides is a four-movement suite for Organ based on the roughly equal divisions of the church year - Advent Lent Whitsun and Michaelmas - which in turn hark back to earlier secular traditions.Throughout there are short references and hints to plainsong and other hymns relevant to the seasons. Drawing on a wide range of colours and textures the composer creates an evocative and varied suite of pieces perfectly suited for both recital and church performance; as such the work will be welcomed by a wide range of players.

Evocation to a Friend was commissioned for the Choristers of Canterbury Cathedral on behalf of Befrienders International (now Befrienders Worldwide). The text is by David Race and explores themes of friendship and hope. The music grows in intensity over a cyclic harmonic pattern with repeating melodic fragments arranged across the four voices creating a hypnotic effect. After a bleak and reflective interlude in the middle the music unwinds to a peaceful conclusion.The Novello New Choral Series is an inspiring selection of new works from a range of contemporary composers offering pieces for all types of choirs including sacred and secularworks from simple four-part settings to more expansive yet accessible repertoire in an exciting variety of styles. This collection is perfect for choirs looking to broaden their repertoire and explore some of the best new music around.Timothy Noon (b.1974) is Director of Music at Holy Trinity Cathedral Auckland New Zealand. He received his musical education as a chorister at Hereford Cathedral and subsequently as Organ Scholar at Christ Church Oxford. Following appointments at St Patrick’s Cathedral Dublin and Canterbury Cathedral he became Organist and Master of the Choristers at St David’s Cathedral Pembrokeshire and then Director of Music at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral before moving to his present position in 2011. Timothy Noon - Evocation To A Friend by musicroom

Symphonic Fresco On Genesis 1:1-31. Par HAKIM NAJI. Cosmogonie was written after an improvisation of the composer at the Haarlem International Organ Improvisation Competition, Rotterdam 1981. The given theme was an abstract graphic by Enrique Raxach. The result is an evocation of the opening verses of the Genesis. / Niveau : Intermédiaire / Répertoire / Orgue

In Flanders Fields is a series of poignant and evocative choral works with a theme of reconciliation and remembrance set to iconic texts by John McCrae and Rupert Brooke.Alan Smith was born in London in 1962 and spent his childhood in Croydon. He sang with various local choirs and attended the nearby Royal School of Church Music where he began organ lessons with Michael Fleming at the age of ten. He was appointed as Organist and Choirmaster of a local church at the age of 16 and later became Organ Scholar at Kings' College London where he studied from 1981 to 1984. As part of his music degree he specialized in composition studying with Nicola LeFanu David Lumsdaine and George Nicholson.Following postgraduate training at the London Institute of Education Alan began his teaching career. After working in various schools he became Head of Music at Hazelwick School Crawley in 1990 a post he continues to hold. In the same year he came to some prominence by winning the RSCM's annual composing competition. His successful entry Let the Peoples Praise You became his first published piece and continues to be widely performed. Since then his choral compositions have won several awards most recently the Thornesian Prize in 2003 and an honorable mention in the 2004 Vanguard Premieres Competition.Alan's output is predominantly of choral and vocal music much of it written for specific choirs or occasions and his catalogue runs to over 150 works. In the UK his music is published by Animus Curiad Cantiones Press Escorial Edition Fagus Music and RSCM while in America he is published by Abingdon Press CanticaNOVA OUP Pavane and Roger Dean.Since 1998 Alan has been Director of Music at St Andrew's church in Burgess Hill West Sussex where he lives with his wife and three children.

Alan Bullard's Star Of The East for SATB and Organ (or Piano).  This attractive setting of Reginald Heber's 1811 hymn for Epiphany was originally published as part of The New Oxford Easy Anthem Book. Bullard brilliantly captures the mood of the text through varied choral textures expressive harmony and an evocative organ (or Piano) accompaniment.

Bob Chilcott's The Night He Was Born for SATB and Organ. This is a gentle and lyrical setting of a text by Helen Dunmore. Uniting a simple tuneful melody with luscious harmonies this evocative carol retells the Christmas story beautifully. A wonderful addition to the Christmas repertory.

Published in 2014 the Chrysalides for piano by Patrick Burgan (born in 1960) are the product of a commission by the Epinal International Piano Competition which included the ten-minute piece in the programme of its March 2015 edition. The initially somewhat enigmatic tagline of these Chrysalides which translates as “imaginal variations for piano” is in fact an organistic metaphor the chrysalid being the intermediary stage between the caterpillar and the butterfly’s final form the imago.    Following the path of this metamorph­osis Burgan’s imaginalvariations start with chaos (pre-birth) and undergo all the evolutionary stages which gradually cla­ri­fy the image of the theme – the imago whose calm appeased and completed form we only discover at the very end. The listener perceives an inversed theme and variations in terms of structure but is also faced with the poetical evocation of a birth. Revealing the secrets of the metamorph­osis through a musical language highly charged with sensuality this piece is a celebration of life.

Alan Bullard's A Light In The Stable tells the Christmas story through a blend of original settings and well-known carols and is suitable for both concert and church choirs. Scored for SATB with Organ or Piano accompaniment this piece can also be performed with a small Orchestra or Chamber group and there are parts for optional Vocal solos. The familiar Gospel words (which may be spoken sung or replaced with other appropriate readings) are interspersed with a range of new material including the lively Glory to God; Sing Lullaby in which Mary foreshadows the events of Jesus' life; and the reflective A Light forToday an evocation of the Nativity tableau. The audience/congregation are encouraged to join in for some carols and choir and listeners will delight in the new settings of familiar words. A wonderful companion to Bullard's Advent celebration O Come Emmanuel this work is perfect for anyone looking for a new take on familiar Christmas words and melodies.

Tarik O’Regan's The Night's Untruth for SATB chorus Brass ensemble and Organ is a co-commission celebrating the 10th anniversary of JAM (The John Armitage Memorial Trust) and the 40th anniversary of VocalEssence. 'The Night’s Untruth explores the use of sleep as metaphor by dint of excerpts from poems written in the 17th to 20th centuries. Death love fear ecstasy isolation dreaming and rest are all textual “variations” on the “theme” of sleep and can be found in the chosen texts. The work’s title is taken from a line in a poem by Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) and speaks tothe composition’s focus on sleep as a parallel possibly dystopian existence to the one experienced in our waking hours.' - Tarik O’Regan March 2010 Scored for brass quintet organ and SATB choir with (minor) divisi and occasional moderately demanding solos for tenor and soprano this evocative 16-minute work probes the mystery of sleep with texts from poems by Keats Samuel Daniel Shakespeare and Hart Crane: 'death love fear ecstasy isolation dreaming and rest' are the themes O'Regan explores through these texts in a work as episodic as a disturbed night with the title creating a 'focus in sleep as a parallel possibly dystopian existence'. - Organists' Review

Make the silence talk'La Muette knew how to make the silence talk like no one', writes Djavann in his book (La Muette, © Flammarion 2008). Those words deeply touched me for they express one of the most beautiful metaphors in music. Through the lines of discourse, beyond words, I was listening to the silence of 'La Muette'. A rare and intense listening which joins the same internal listening I use when I'm writing my score. I was listening to La Muette, I decided to write a new piece to make the silent voice of La Muette told by Chahdortt Djavann sound through music. Choosing the extracts The text put in music is composed of short extracts from Djavann's story. I focused on this woman's portrait, who conquers her freedom through silence in which she forms a strong love relationship with her niece Fatemeh on the one hand, and the Uncle on the other hand. 'She had made her silence become her art of living, her freedom' writes Djavann. The extremely dramatic tension, the flow of the singing in Persian language, and the oppression in relation to the Iranian context are trying to underline the independent beauty of that woman who resists and exists without a voice. Story A young 15 years old Iranian girl named Fatemeh is in jail. Waiting for her death sentence, she writes the story of her aunt on a small notebook, 'so that someone remembers La Muette and myself'. The young teenager was raised by her aunt who becomes mute because she decided to stop talking on a dark day of her own childhood when she was interrogated, never to tell THE truth. An aunt whose silence makes even more fascinating, haughty, with an insolent look, cigarette at her lips, bare-footed and without any scarf on her head. 'La Muette' had made her silence become her art of living, her freedom. Around her, women start to talk, even considering her mad, for only a mad person could act this way. Fatemeh loves her mute aunt unconditionally, that is how she wants to become a woman, by being like her, fascinated by her silence and her excesses. La Muette embodies a figure of Freedom and makes us remember that in some countries, the woman who won't be submissive risks capital punishment. She will be hung. Following this beautiful text by Chahdortt Djavann, 'La Muette', a powerful text, stiff, tensed, without any lyricism nor compromises, which takes place in Iran under the Mollahs' regime. Persian: Phonological material / Compositional material Djavann's story is written in French. I asked Baharé Khadjé-Nouri to translate the text into Persian, and worked with her on pronunciation, accentuation, metric and the structure of the language, and I thank her again for that. I spent a long time having some people reading me the text in Persian and through listening I immersed myself in that sound universe. From this linguistic material, the beginning of the piece starts with the constitution of a tank of sound objects which will constitute parts of the compositional material. To compose the phonological tank, I worked on writing the pronunciation that lies at the origin of every possible vocal composition, writing the tone as well as the 'percussive - resounding' aspects of phonemes, multiple uses of fricative consonants or sibilants. Finally I used the vocal treatment of the phoneme through modes of play in relation to sprechsang: sing -inspire, or -expire, -blow, -chanting, -whispering, -spitting, -speaking. But a purely phonetic analysis of the vocal structures composing the sung part would reduce the word to its mere phonetic entity. The phonological material then constituted a compositional material by giving to the sung word its semantic entity. Form of the piece To strip the drama off every narrative element, at least of the discursive and linear character of the story, I first re-organized parts of the text extracted from the whole book in an order fitting the form I wanted to give to the piece (except for the beginning and ending which are kept in their linear forms). I imagined Fatemeh in jail, whose memories bounced between the four walls of her cell: recurring musical material, re-injected in an obsessive way, disjointed and contrasted, continuously modified each time, bouncing from one sequence to the next in another state. The piece is divided into 5 sequences, between each of them is an instrumental interlude with a voice-off, the voice of the present in the cell that contrasts with the singing voice of the sequence, evocation of memories of La Muette (sequence 1: preamble, sequence 2: portrait of La Muette, sequence 3: La Muette and Fatemeh, sequence 4: La Muette and the Uncle, sequence 5: epilogue). Electroacoustic setupFor this piece, I wrote the electroacoustic parts myself at the same time I was writing the instrumental parts. The electroacoustic setup is here considered as a whole instrument, an instrument added to the 12 others electroacoustic instruments and to Donatienne's voice. The electroacoustic sounds are divided into three types: - Samples from the singer's voice and instruments of the TM+ ensemble transformed - The narrator's voice Baharé Khadjé-Nouri in Persian, original version or transformed - Extra-musical sounds As for the synchronization between the acoustic and the electroacoustic scores, we will use for the first time an innovative application developed by Frédéric Bevilacqua and Bruno Zamborlin, not to follow the moves as we did it in StreicherKreis (my string quartet created in November 2008), but to follow the voice and orchestra. Thus, we will be using an 'audio-following', which constituted a first. This setup of recognition and following will allow the synchronization between instrumental and electroacoustic scores in a musical and precise way. Concerning the interactivity between performers and device, it will all be in real-time. Characteristics of the musicians' sound will 'interpret' what comes out of the speakers. The musicians will define the settings of the sound transformations, in terms of space, transposition, tone or length. This new piece expresses a message through the choice of subject that goes beyond strictly music. For me, it is important that both the composer and writer can invest their work into problematics which they're confronted to because they are immediate witnesses. / Soprano Et Percussions

Psallite Choral Series. From our Psallite Series, we present a sacred tone poem destined to be an important addition to the choral canon. Luxurious in harmonic language, this octavo framed in Latin describes the angel's announcement of Christ's birth to the shepherds. Emerging poetically from stillness and darkness with fragile sound, the piece opens organically as the divine glory of light breaks forth with angelic Glorias in luminous chords. Divided voices and evocative watercolor-like dissonances create a substantial sonic stack, a challenge worth taking for choirs of distinction. The cyclical text returns to the opening darkness and silence before ending with peace. Magnificent!