Chicago-based
William Ferris Chorale was founded in 1971 by tenor John Vorrasi and conductor William Ferris, who led it until his death in 2000. Since 2005, Paul French has been its music director and has continued its commitment to commissioning and performing new choral music. This album includes an assortment of first recordings of pieces by American composers, some well known and some relatively obscure. Overall, the collection represents a conservative aesthetic that in itself is value-neutral, but most of the works recorded here seem like a rehashing of musical ideas that have been stated before, often, and better. The pieces by some of the most familiar composers,
Alan Hovhaness and
Easley Blackwood, are particularly hackneyed in their apparently oblivious appropriation of some of the most clichéd patterns and devices of choral music, and in an embarrassing lack of substance, these are pieces that would have seemed old-fashioned and ill-conceived if they had appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century. Ferris' three Latin motets are skillfully put together and have an appealing simplicity and integrity. More interesting is the Stabat mater by the youngest composer represented here, Egon Cohen, born in 1984. The most impressive piece is
George Rochberg's disciplined, expressive, and inventive Behold, My Servant from 1973, this is clearly a composer who knows what he is doing and has something to say. The chorale sings with precision and warmth, and its intonation is good. Cedille's sound is clean and open, but not especially full.