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Love Raise Your Voice

trio

Love Raise Your Voice is a new MSR Classics CD from soprano Christine Howlett, pianist Holly Chatham and violinist Patrick Wood.

"Holly and I went to school together in the Early Music Institute at IU," said Howlett as she described the genesis of the project. "So we have known each other for quite a long time. A couple of years ago we decided to do a concert of works for violin, soprano and piano. Her husband is Patrick Wood Uribe, the violinist on the recording."

"When we planned the concert, I suggested doing some early music, but Holly said that if we were going to do some early stuff we should do it on Baroque instruments and her husband plays modern fiddle. So we stuck with more modern composers.  Frankly, I think there are a lot of early music musicians that enjoy modern music because they're exploring things that are in some ways very new.

"Holly and I just assumed that there would be an immense amount of repertoire waiting for us, but what we ended up finding was that there wasn't very much. We ended up approached different composers and asking them to write things for us. I teach and conduct at Vassar College so I knew Tarik O'Regan, Carson Cooman and Leonard Enns from their choral music.  We were sort of amazed that they and everyone that we asked said, ‘Yes,' so we have quite a range of different styles on the CD."

"When the three of us were trying to name the album, we had trouble in coming up with something because all of the pieces are so different.  Love is definitely a theme that flows through a lot of the music and we do call it Love Raise Your Voice, but the project was really about finding music that we liked and that was different. We wanted to put together a recording of music that we thought was good and to promote these composers. It's been quite wonderful. "

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