PRESS RELEASE: NOW AVAILABLE: Brooklyn Youth Chorus's "Silent Voices"
NOW AVAILABLE:
Brooklyn Youth Chorus's
Silent Voices
feat. International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)with works by Jeff Beal, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Paul D. Miller/DJ Spooky, Nico Muhly, Shara Nova, Toshi Reagon, Kamala Sankaram, and Caroline Shaw
stream / support
“Among choral groups, Brooklyn Youth Chorus stands alone.”
- Rebecca Milzoff, New York Magazine
Brooklyn Youth Chorus
Credit: Kathryn Tornelli
New Amsterdam Records is excited to announce the release of Silent Voices, the sophomore album from Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Out today, the album is available in digital and CD formats on Bandcamp and all other outlets.
The album features a selection of works from the Chorus’s ongoing multimedia, multi-composer concert series of the same name, installments of which have been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (May 2017), National Sawdust (April 2018) and PROTOTYPE Festival (Jan 2017). On the album, pieces from Jeff Beal (“House of Cards”), Ellis Ludwig-Leone (San Fermin), Mary Kouyoumdjian, Paul Miller/DJ Spooky, Nico Muhly, Shara Nova, Toshi Reagon, Kamala Sankaram, and Caroline Shaw are performed by Brooklyn Youth Chorus and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).
The Silent Voices project was born out of the desire to create music that was both topically relevant to its very own choristers, and to the time and place in which we all live. The Chorus commissioned a diverse group of innovative artists to interpret rich historical narratives and personal stories creating individual works that explore race and identity, gender and sexuality, inequity and social disparity.
Unifying this broad work is the distinctively beautiful sound of the rigorously-trained singers—a chorus of culturally and socioeconomically diverse New York City young people, ages 12–18. This collection of songs and voices has empowered the young singers to use their voices to uplift others, creating music that truly matters.
Silent Voices Tracklisting:
1. so quietly (composition and text by Caroline Shaw)
2. Blind to the Illness (composition and text by Shara Nova)
3. Let Freedom Ring (composition and text by Shara Nova)
4. Advice to a Young Woman (composition by Nico Muhly, text from The Lady’s New-years Gift, attributed to George Savile, Marquis of Halifax 1633-1695)
5. Lying in a field, age 67 (composition by Ellis Ludwig-Leone,
text by Max Posner)
6. Singing in a chorus, age 14 (composition by Ellis Ludwig-Leone, text by Max Posner)
7. I Can Barely Look (composition by Mary Kouyoumdjian, text by members of Brooklyn Youth Chorus edited by Mary Kouyoumdjian)
8. Brooklyn Bound (composition and text by Toshi Reagon)
9. Go Tell It (composition by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky,
text by Michelle Alexander from The New Jim Crow)
10. Keeping the Look Loose (composition by Kamala Sankaram,
text by Claudia Rankine)
11. Hope (composition by Jeff Beal, text by Pauli Murray from
Patricia Bell-Scott’s The Firebrand and the First Lady)
12. Dear Mrs. Roosevelt (composition by Jeff Beal, text by
Pauli Murray and Eleanor Roosevelt from Patricia Bell-Scott’s The Firebrand and the First Lady)
13. Freedom is a Dream (composition by Jeff Beal,
text by Pauli Murray from Dark Testament and other poems)
14. Prophecy (composition by Jeff Beal, text by Pauli Murray and Eleanor Roosevelt)