Multi-faith Mass for San Francisco's Chanticleer
THE SAN FRANCISCO-based classical vocal ensemble Chanticleer are
breaking controversial ground with their new album 'And On Earth,
Peace: A Chanticleer
Mass'. Director Joseph Jennings invited five composers, Douglas J
Cuomo, Kamran Ince, Shulamit Ran, Ivan Moody and Michael McGlynn, to
write different pieces of a Mass. The result is being released by
Warner Classics in May following the Mass's world premiere in New York
at the Metropolitan Museum. Jennings told Billboard magazine, "What we
hoped was to create a Mass that embraces many musical - and spiritual
- impulses. As I envisioned it, it wouldn't even just be limited to
the Christian faith." Two composers set texts from their own cultural
and belief backgrounds, Ince drawing upon words written by 13th
century poet Jalaluddin Rumi, who followed Sufism, a form of Islam,
and Ran who utilised, amongst other things, Jewish material.