Song Offerings: Choral Works by Christopher Tin Christopher Tin, Kantorei, Joel Rinsema, Alicia Rigsby, Dylan Tyree, David Short, Nicholas Recuber, Remy Le Boeuf

• Christopher Tin (b. 1976): Song Offerings:
• 1 Tin: Song Offerings: I. Let My Country Awake 05:46
• 2 Tin: Song Offerings: II. This Rhythm 04:48
• 3 Tin: Song Offerings: III. Stream of Life 04:02
• 4 Tin: Song Offerings: IV: Only Thee 04:22
• 5 Tin: Song Offerings: V. Joy 04:22
• Transfigurations:
• 6 Tin: Transfigurations: I. Fire Prelude 02:20
• 7 Tin: Transfigurations: II. Photon 04:00
• 8 Tin: Transfigurations: III. Ozymandias 05:47
• 9 Tin: Transfigurations: IV. Iphis 05:31
• 10 Tin: Transfigurations: V. Yeshua 05:02
• 11 Tin: Transfigurations: VI. Tat Tvam Asi 03:29
• Total Runtime 49:29

Info zu Song Offerings: Choral Works by Christopher Tin

Song Offerings: Choral Works by Christopher Tin is a compilation of two multi-movement works for chorus and small instrumental ensemble: 'Song Offerings', based on the Nobel Prize-winning book of poetry Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore, and 'Transfigurations', featuring lyrics by the foremost choral lyricist of our times, Charles Anthony Silvestri. Both works were performed by Denver's premiere choral ensemble Kantorei, and recorded by the Grammy-winning production team Soundmirror (Blanton Alspaugh, producer and Mark Donahue, engineer).

SONG OFFERINGS

'Song Offerings' is a setting of poems from Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali, a stunning book of devotional poetry that made Tagore the first non-European to with the Nobel Prize in Literature. The piece is a return to Christopher's more joyous style of choral writing (e.g. "Baba Yetu", "Waloyo Yamoni"). It's densely packed with melodic ear worms and syncopated rhythms, and is heavily inspired by his childhood love of classic rock (particularly The Beatles), jazz, and musical theatre. It was commissioned by Kantorei, and is conducted by their Artistic Director Joel M. Rinsema.

TRANSFIGURATIONS

'Transfigurations' is a collaboration with pre-eminent choral lyricist Charles Anthony Silvestri. The six-movement suite is a meditation on change in its various forms--from sunlight transforming into life, to the erosion of empires, to an ancient Roman myth about a girl transforming into a boy, to the ascension of Christ. The suite ends with a lyrical nod to Rabindranath Tagore, bridging the two works, thus achieving Christopher's signature device of albums that seamlessly loop back to their beginning. The piece was commissioned by the Chromatica Chorale, and is conducted by Christopher himself.

WRITTEN FOR LIVE PERFORMANCE

As opposed to Christopher's previous large works (e.g. To Shiver the Sky, The Lost Birds), which were primarily composed as records, both "Song Offerings" and "Transfigurations" were conceived as works for live performance by choirs of all sizes, ranging from professional to community. They feature a smaller instrumental accompaniment (either solo piano, or an eclectic band of piano, 2 celli, double bass, and an added soprano saxophone for 'Transfigurations'), and are sung entirely in English.

A NEW TYPE OF ALBUM

These last few years Christopher has taken on many more commissions in the classical world: for choral music, operas, and concerti. Many of these commissions also involve the commissioning ensembles making a recording of the new work, so in addition to his major concept albums like 'The Drop That Contained the Sea' and 'The Lost Birds', there will be a new type of album that will come with more frequency: recordings of his concert works. 'Song Offerings: Choral Works by Christopher Tin' is the first of this new type of album, which are often conducted, recorded, and produced by others, using studios and techniques different from Christopher's usual production process.

Kantorei
Joel Rinsema, conductor
Alicia Rigsby, soprano
Dylan Tyree, cello
Nicholas Recuber, bass
Remy Le Boeuf, alto saxophone

Christopher Tin
California-born, British-educated Christopher Tin is a two-time Grammy-winning composer of concert and media music. Time Magazine calls his music 'rousing, anthemic' while The Guardian calls it 'joyful' and 'an intelligent meeting of melody and theme'. His output is strikingly diverse: ranging from lush symphonic works, to world-music infused choral anthems, to electro-acoustic hybrid film and video game scores. He is also an in-demand collaborator, working with artists across a wide-range of musical genres: Lang Lang, Alan Menken, BT, and Danny Elfman, to name a few.

His music has been performed and premiered in many of the world's most prestigious venues: the Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, United Nations General Assembly Hall and Carnegie Hall, where he had an entire concert devoted to his music. He has also been performed by ensembles diverse as the Philharmonia Orchestra, Metropole Orchestra, and US Navy Band, and has also conducted full concerts of his own music with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Welsh National Opera Orchestra.

His song 'Baba Yetu', a Swahili setting of The Lord's Prayer, is a modern choral standard, fusing together infectious melody and gospel rhythms with complex modulations and soaring orchestration. It was the winner of the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocals, and is one of the all-time best selling choral octavos for Alfred Publishing, as well as being one of the most frequently performed contemporary choral pieces. Originally written as the theme song for the video game 'Civilization IV', it cemented its place in history when the Guinness Book of World Records recognized it as the first piece of music written for a video game ever to win a Grammy.

Tin's self-released albums have also achieved considerable acclaim. His debut album, the multi-lingual song cycle Calling All Dawns, won him a second Grammy in 2011 for Best Classical Crossover Album, and his follow-up release The Drop That Contained the Sea debuted at #1 on Billboard's classical charts, and premiered to a sold out audience at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium.

His film work includes scores for feature films Suddenly Seventeen, Tess, Dante's Inferno and Dead Space: Aftermath, as well as additional music for X2: X-Men United, Sausage Party, and Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs Evil. His game work includes his critically acclaimed music for Civilization IV and Civilization VI, Offworld Trading Company and Karateka. He also co-created the startup sound for the original Microsoft Surface computing platform.

Born to immigrant parents from Hong Kong, Tin grew up in northern California, firmly grounded in classical music, but heavily influenced by jazz, musical theatre, and the underground rave scene of '90s San Francisco. He did his undergraduate work at Stanford and Oxford, graduating with honors with a BA in Music and English, and an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. He then received an MMus with Distinction from the Royal College of Music in London, where he graduated at the top of his class and won the Joseph Horovitz Composition Prize. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Sundance Institute Fellowship, and BMI Conducting Fellowship. He is composer-in-residence with DCINY, and has received commissions by the US Embassy in the United Kingdom, Stratus Chamber Orchestra, Bangor Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra at St. Matthews, and ISCMS Festival. He is also Honorary Artistic Director of the United Nations Chamber Music Society, Honorary President of the International Choral Festival Wales, and a patron of El Sistema France.

In 2020 Christopher signed with Universal Decca, releasing his oratorio about the history of flight as told by 11 of our greatest astronomers, investors, visionaries and pilots: 'To Shiver the Sky'. His works are published by Concord Publishing/Boosey & Hawkes and he works out of his own custom-built studio in Santa Monica, Los Angeles.

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