‘The Singing Guitar,’ 12 guitarists, 26 singers and a cellist, in new works by four American composers. Exploring the unique connection of voices and strings.
Listeners experience an unusual musical journey on the Delos Music recording; ‘The Singing Guitar.’ Combining voices, guitars, and cello with Native American and non-native pioneer stories, it is hard to overstate the power, challenge, and difficulty of this unique collaboration that expresses these exquisitely crafted compositions by Reena Esmail, Nico Muhly, Kile Smith and Craig Hella Johnson.
On this episode of The Singing Guitar, composer Kile Smith. LISTEN
Grammy-nominated composer Kile Smith has gained international acclaim with commissions from The Crossing, Conspirare, Piffaro, Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Chor Leoni, Helena Symphony, Choral Arts Society of Washington, Lyric Fest, Westminster Choir College, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, Newburyport Chamber Music Festival, the Pennsylvania and iSing Girlchoirs, Choral Arts Philadelphia, and Gaudete Brass, with major choral works heard in New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Canada, England, and New Zealand. Gramophone called Vespers “spectacular” and Audiophile Audition, “easily one of the best releases of the year of any type… a crime to pass up.” Ten CDs with his music have been released since 2018.
The Arc in the Sky with The Crossing received a 2020 Grammy nomination for Best Choral Performance, and his Canticle with Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble helped win the 2020 Best Classical Producer Grammy. The Philadelphia Orchestra featured The Bremen Town Musicians in their 2021 “Our City, Your Orchestra” chamber music series.
Kile has also been performed by the L.A. Guitar Quartet, Seraphic Fire, The 24, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Sofia Philharmonic, the Grand Rapids and Delaware symphonies, Orchestra 2001, and Network for New Music. His first opera, The Book of Job, will premiere in multiple cities in the 2022/23 season.
About the Album — The wonderful Conspirare chamber choir, known for its interpretive depth and otherworldly sonic lushness, offers another of its captivating programs-this time joined by three superb guitar quartets-in a program remarkably relevant to our time.
Conspirare’s 2019 Delos album, The Hope of Loving (DE 3578), was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award for Best Choral Performance in 2020. The concert version of The Singing Guitar was performed to full houses in 2019. The combination of guitar quartet and chorus is so successful it’s surprising that more composers have not written for it. Four recently written compositions feature the voices of Conspirare accompanied by guitar-twelve guitars in Nico Muhly’s How Little You Are, a compelling composition telling of the struggles of pioneer women. Kile Smith’s The Dawn’s Early Light ponders our national anthem in the writings of a Native American woman, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. The album is rounded out with compositions by Reena Esmail and Conspirare’s founder and director Craig Hella Johnson.
A Chicago Tribune Best Classical Recording of 2020, A WRTI Best of 2020 Album, Apple Music Featured New Album, and Qobuz Grand Selection.
Produced by Max Horowitz — Crossover Media, This content, as well as the related podcast, are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) for redistribution and adaptation.
