Intended as a 'community songbook, with music written for several connected circles of singers in Vermont' (including Village Harmony). The book, which is accompanied by a disc with recordings of all of the compositions, includes twenty-five of Don Jamison's beloved and imaginative compositions. Jamison has divided his highly-singable and fascinating choral pieces into three sections: shape-note-inspired tunes, three-part songs, and four- and five-part songs. The title of both the book and the first song comes from Isaac Watts' text: 'Far in the heavens my God retires:/ My God, the mark of my desires,/ And hides his lovely face.' Many of the songs, the composer writes in his introduction, 'have to do with a search for God - or the spiritual world more broadly - and a right relationship with nature and the cosmos. Sometimes when I listen to music, and, more often, when I make music, the world seems to reveal a little more of what it really is - and relationships feel clear and direct, and "heaven" not so far away at all' |
