the pioneer press and Arvo Pärt

The Singers are performing my arrangement of Gabriel's Message for their "What Sweeter Music" series this December (and doing an amazing job as always) and Ron Hawley of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press gave a fantastic review earlier this week. It's not much, but he was complimentary and, frankly, that's all I can ask for when someone writes a widely-read opinion of any of my pieces. You can check out the entire thing here (he was very good to the choir as a whole) but here's what he had to say about my piece:

"...and a terrific arrangement of a Basque carol, 'Gabriel's Message,' by ensemble member Joshua Shank opened with a massive, dramatically built chord that flowed into an energetic four-part carol rendition."

I love the use of the word "massive". I'm 5'7" but, according to one of the Midwest's most widely-read newspapers, I can be massive and dramatic.

Mr. Hawley was nice enough to include it in the same sentence as Z. Randall Stroope's "All My Heart This Night Rejoices" (they're paired together) which I think was the best compliment of all. Being a true composer-in-residence with this choir over the past five years has been a total blessing and I can't wait to hear their reading of To Sing You To Sleep for the next concert series.

MPR woke me up this morning with the "Prayer" from Arvo Pärt's Kanon Pokajanen and I've been in a great mood all day. I wonder if there is some sort of alarm clock I can buy that only plays his choral works around 5:15am every morning. Either way I'm going to dig out my Pärt recordings and listen to them again. I've been hitting a lot of Poulenc lately and it's high time to calm back down. Thanks, Arvo!