The Element Choir - At Rosedale United

Artist:  The Element Choir
Album: At Rosedale United
Genre:  Avant Garde,Free Improvisation,Modern Classica
Labe:  Barnyard
Recording Date: 2009


This recording features Christine Duncan’s extraordinary 50-voice improvising ensemble, The Element Choir, in collaboration with Jesse Zubot, violin; Jim Lewis, trumpet; Jean Martin, percussion; and Eric Robertson, playing the church’s beautiful Cassavent pipe organ at Rosedale United.

I’ve watched The Element Choir grow into the wonderful paradox that it embodies on this record. It is both a ragged multiplicity — its membership reflects extreme differences of age, history, style, and education (just like that of any community) — and a remarkable unity under Christine Duncan’s singular leadership and conduction skills. Insofar as the Choir coheres into a single thing, though, it amounts to one of the five personalities who create this ostensibly small-group and — let it not be forgotten — freely improvised music: Duncan (Choir), Lewis, Martin, Robertson, and Zubot. They possess the musicality, playfulness, and restraint to allow these unique and, in the most sublime moments, overwhelming sound resources (not only instruments and voices, but also the space itself) to be harnessed and channeled into a tangible feeling of wonder. This is very literally a wonderful record. — Scott Thomson, January 2010

Christine Duncan: conducts The Element Choir a 51 voice improvising choir
Jim Lewis: trumpet
Jean Martin: drums, trumophone
Eric Robertson: Casavant pipe organ
Jesse Zubot: violin

1. Prologue
2. As the Crow Flies
3. Funhouse
4. Cloud Hands
5. Dapple
6. Bird Calling
7. Processional
8. Sun Up
1N1

FLAC