The Sacred Veil
Acis, 2023
9/10
A Grammy winning American composer with a penchant for choral music, Eric Whitacre is aligned with The Choir of Trinity College, Melbourne, Polyphonic Voices, Rosanna Hunt, Rhodri Clarke and Christopher Watson for this story of courtship, love and grief.
The graceful keys of Clarke’s piano opens the listen with “The Veil Opens”, and the harmonizing voices from the choir follows with much emotion, and “In a Dark and Distant Year” continues with the lower vocals alongside the soaring sopranos of the dreamy climate.
Into the middle, the soft keys of “I’m Afraid” are met with strong attention to atmosphere via the sublime intimacy, while “Delicious Times” meshes beauty with vulnerability amid the stirring keys and layered vocals.
“You Rise, I Fall” and “Child Of Wonder” exit the listen, where the former floats with a haze of mesmerizing ideas and cautious vocals, and the latter injects the gripping cello from Hunt into the pensive, thoughtful conclusion.
The musicianship here is flawless, as is the singing, and it makes for a sensitive and harmonic experience that you’ll be very much in awe of.
Travels well with: George Muffat- Apparatus Musico-Organisticus; Herschel Garfein- The Layers