Colors of Love - Chanticleer
This compilation of modern-day madrigals, the latest in a fascinating series of discs from the San Francisco-based all-male vocal groupChanticleer, won the Grammy for Best Small Ensemble Performance of 1999. The selections range over a variety of styles and aesthetics, from the haunting, hypnotic sounds of Steven Stucky'sCradle Songsto the archaic, ethereal beauty and Eastern inflections of John Tavener's "Village Wedding." There are the soft (and somewhat affected) asperities of Bernard Rands'Canti d'Amoras well as the gentle, almost English pastoralism of Zhou Long's "Words of the Sun" (beautiful!) and the colorfully exotic Orientalism of Chen Yi'sTang Poems. Other examples of the wide range here are the self-conscious busywork of Augusta Read Thomas'sLove Songsto the darkly lush, 12-part weave of Steven Sametz's "In Time Of," with its radiant climax and pulsating chordal sonorites like the tolling of bells. All of this Chanticleer sings with striking freshness and commitment, virtuosic to a fare-thee-well, always sensitive to the emotional cues of the texts. The recording, made at Skywalker Ranch in January of 1999, is vivid and warm, and so is much of the music. Truly a winning disc.--Ted Libbey