Album of the Year 2020

All Things Common: Music of Tarik O’Regan

Pacific Chorale, Robert Istad, Salastina Ensemble

17,9930,99
(3 press reviews)
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Original Recording Format: DSD 256
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Pacific Chorale’s album All Things Common is a bright success story from 2020. Music Director Rob Istad conducts Pacific Chorale and Salastina Ensemble in a glorious cross-section of composer Tarik O’Regan’s choral masterpieces written over the past two decades.

CD executive producer Lenora Meister also commissioned Facing West, for which the ink was barely dry by the time of our concert and recording session. Arian Jansen served as executive producer for our DSD edition of All Things Common which is exclusively available in Stereo and 5 Channel DSD at Native DSD Music.

Producer Bob Attiyeh says “Working with conductor and Pacific Chorale music director Robert Istad is always a pleasure.  When he asked Yarlung to record his debut album with Pacific Chorale performing music by Tarik O’Regan, I knew we were in for a treat.  I loved the acoustics at The Soraya, where we recorded Nostos with Rob, but for Pacific Chorale, we were able to work in magnificent Samueli Theater at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts, where Pacific Chorale is a resident company.  I always enjoy making recordings in Samueli Theater, with fabulous and adjustable acoustics, silent air conditioning and lights, and a theater staff that treats our Yarlung crew like returning royalty.

The wonderful Lenora Meister, long a singer with Pacific Chorale herself, not only commissioned Facing West, recorded for the first time on this album, but she underwrote and served as executive director for our project.

String players from Salastina joined Pacific Chorale for some of the repertoire on our album.  Salastina musicians included co-directors Maia Jasper White and Kevin Kumar on violins; Meredith Crawford, viola; Charles Tyler, cello; and Eric Shetzen, bass.  Beyond their roles with Salastina, many listeners will know Meredith Crawford as principal viola in the Pacific Symphony at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, and Maia Jasper White as a member of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and as Martin Chalifour’s violin partner playing Schoenberg in Yarlung’s Martin Chalifour in Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Writing about Rob and Pacific Chorale, Tarik commented in our liner notes “Working with Robert Istad and Pacific Chorale… has been an especially important experience for me…. The composition comes to life measure by measure, brick by brick, until eventually it stands free, breathing and swaying ever so slightly from the breezes of subtle interpretations and gentle inflexions. This is the magic in the air….”

Pacific Chorale
Salastina Ensemble
Rob Istad, Music Director & Conductor

Tracklist

Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.
1.
All Things Common
05:03
2.
Blessed Are They
04:47
3.
Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis
14:58
4.
Turn
04:57
5.
Facing West
05:42
6.
The Ecstasies Above
19:39
7.
I Listen to the Stillness of You
03:52

Total time: 00:58:58

Additional information

Label

SKU

YAR02592DSD

Qualities

, , ,

Channels

,

Artists

, ,

Composers

Genres

,

Analog to Digital Converters

Hapi, Merging Technologies

Executive Producer

Arian Jansen

Mastering Engineer

Steve Hoffman & Bob Attiyeh (Stereo & Surround Sound), Tom Caulfield (DSD Stereo, DSD Surround Sound and DSD 512 Stereo)

Microphone Preamps

Microphone Preamps by Elliot Midwood

Microphone Technician

David Bock

Microphones

Ted Ancona’s famous “Frank Sinatra” AKG C-24 vacuum tube stereo microphone and two additional mid-hall Ted Ancona Schoeps M222 vacuum tube omnidirectional mono microphones from Ancona Audio

Notes

DSD 512 Stereo files created by Tom Caulfield at the NativeDSD Mastering Lab using Jussi Laako's "EC" modulators from Signalyst HQ Player Pro 4 Mastering Software

Conductors

Original Recording Format

Producer

Bob Attiyeh

Recording Engineer

Bob Attiyeh and Arian Jansen

Recording Location

Samueli Theater, Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California on May 20th and 21st, 2019

Recording Software

Pyramix, Merging Technologies

Recording Type & Bit Rate

DSD 256 (Stereo and Surround Sound)

Release DateMay 12, 2020

Press reviews

Hi-Fi News & Review 9 out of 5

I’m not familiar with either the composer of the works on this set, London-born Tarik O’Regan, or the Pacific Chorale, based in California, for which he is composer in residence.

However, what is clear from this set is that the co-operation of composer and ensemble delivers spectacular results. Captured with crystal clarity by producer Bob Attiyeh and fellow recording engineer Arian Jansen of SonoruS Audio.

There are strong influences of the British choral tradition in O’Regan’s works, along with settings of the likes of DH Lawrence and Edgar Allen Poe. They’re all performed here in truly luminous and vivid sound, with wonderful concert-hall ambience, that’s hard to fault.

Most striking is the near-15-minute ‘Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis’ with its multi-layered vocals and plaintive solo cello. It’s both dramatic and moving.

Voice of OC

The Pacific Chorale, who are still uncertain about when they will be able to perform again, offers the latest works by Tarik O’Regan on their new album. The fluent and sumptuous recording is worth a listen.

The Pacific Chorale’s latest recording, its first under artistic director Robert Istad, has come out just in time for the COVID crisis, which is to say that the musicians have something to offer their public at a moment when they cannot meet face to face. (The Chorale has canceled its annual summer choral festival; plans for performances in the fall are still uncertain.)

The recording, on Yarlung Records, of music by Tarik O’Regan, the group’s composer-in-residence, is a striking one, and should keep that public happy. The Chorale has long done good service by living composers, and this disc continues it.

Born in London in 1978, O’Regan is a prolific composer who has written in many genres and has been performed widely. His opera, “The Phoenix,” based on the life of Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, was given its premiere by Houston Grand Opera last year. He studied music at both Oxford and Cambridge and the strong choral traditions there seem to have rubbed off on him — his catalog of choral works is especially large. The Chorale’s recording brings together seven of his choral works, dating from 2001 to 2019. The music reminds my ears, at times, of that of Henryk Gorecki (just here and there), of Benjamin Britten, and of choral music heard on labels such as Harmonia Mundi and ECM.

He is an articulate and communicative composer. First, there are the texts he chooses to set here, from the Bible (King James) and liturgy, but also by Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, D.H. Lawrence and a couple of others, wonderful texts. His musical style is firmly tonal, inspired by Renaissance vocal writing, certain aspects of minimalism, and I suppose the Anglican choral tradition, too. At any rate, he handles the choir with panache; there seems not an unpolished moment in any of these pieces, and many a ravishing one, as O’Regan is a choral “orchestrator,” which is to say, he gets many different sounds out of combining his singers in various ways, often to piquant effect.

In the opening, and title, work of the recording, “All Things Common,” the words “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation” (from Luke) are set in close rhythmic and melodic canon (very quick imitations, like echoes) that expresses the fractured nature of the phrase. In “Turn,” setting a celestial poem by Albert Verwey, a repeated rhythmic pattern “turns” over and over, giving the music a flowing, spinning feeling, like a planet in the night sky.

O’Regan creates layers of sound in many of his pieces, different strata that unfurl simultaneously but that remain distinct. His “Ecstasies Above,” based on Poe’s poem and the longest piece in the collection, is written for two solo vocal quartets, chorus and string quartet, and gives him many opportunities for spatial effects. The string quartet juices the music rhythmically, even suggesting a touch of Bluegrass. Perhaps the “Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis” shows off O’Regan’s chops mostly blatantly — combining canons, minimalism, plainchant, a vocal quartet, full choir, and solo cello in a wonderfully broad sound palette. He was still in his early 20s when he wrote it and can be forgiven for showing his mettle. Still, the piece hangs together.

One of the greatest pleasures of this album though is the simplest and shortest, “I Listen to the Stillness of You,” a brief a cappella setting from Lawrence’s “Amores,” just hushed, sustained chordal harmonies, sometimes far-flung, whispering in your ear.

The recording was made in May of last year, shortly after the Chorale gave a public performance of O’Regan’s work. Istad selected 24 of his 140 Chorale singers for the album, and they were joined by a quintet of strings from the Salastina Music Society. (O’Regan uses the strings most effectively.) Along with the folks from Yarlung, they all headed into the intimate confines of the Samueli Theater at the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts. Yarlung, an audiophile outfit — one of the microphones used here was once owned by Frank Sinatra — captured it all vividly, with clarity and space and warmth.

Istad fashions fluent and sumptuous readings, nicely held together over the long haul. Each piece is represented by a single take on the recording, no splices. Minor blemishes are therefore heard here and there, but more is gained by leaving them in, a feeling of a real performance. In the department of having to complain about something, a minor irritation: The album booklet is helpful and informative, but a listener has to go online to read program notes on the pieces themselves, a cumbersome extra step, at least for me.

Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society

The Very Best Choral Sound Ever Recorded and a Must Own Reference!

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