****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I love this CD. The title may be misleading to some, since it is not primarily “a Shaker album,” although it does contain several wonderful settings of “Simple Gifts” as well as other Shaker songs (Kevin Siegfried’s setting of “The Humble Heart” is very special.) Most of the songs are beautiful small ensemble settings (almost all a cappella) of American traditional material, by Billings to Copland and Thomson to the modern American Siegfried. Especially memorable is “At the Water’s Edge,” Siegfried’s settings of four poems by the 19th century Maine writer, Sarah Orne Jewett. But the CD also contains wonderful settings by British composers – Rutter, Vaughan Williams, Ireland, Elizabeth Poston. For me, this CD has come now to represent a tribute to one of the great vocal ensembles, the Tudor Choir, which has since disbanded, and a certain type of intimate choral writing which they could do exquisitely.
