The Prayer Cycle
It is with primitive urgency and lustrous clarity rising like flickering embers from a fire that Jonathan Elias's ambitiousPrayer Cycleis given voice. Woven together like knotty wool, silk, and fine strands of silvery water, the disparate yet complementary voices of the lateNusrat Fateh Ali Khan,Alanis Morissette,Yungchen Lhamo,Ofra Haza, theAmerican Boychoir,Salif Keita, and others intertwine in multiple languages with the superb English Chamber Orchestra and Chorus. Prayers of supplication, gratitude, and longing build in layers, one on top of and 'twixt and 'tween the other, as movements titled "Mercy," "Grace," "Innocence," "Compassion," and the like. Remarkably, Elias'sPrayer Cycleeloquently captures the ecstasy, pain, grief, and sublime beauty of humanity--as he simply and poignantly writes in his liner notes, "The world we live in is both joyous and cruel."--Paige La Grone