Gretchen Kuhrmann and Choralis embraced my associate composer role with the choir wholeheartedly. It began with a performance of my Requiem at the Chorus America Conference in Washington, DC in 2014, and continued with a spring 2015 concert performance of my
Salisbury Vespers as well as William Walton’s
Belshazzar’s Feast at the National Presbyterian Church. Just about every brass player in the city played in that concert and it was then that I got to know the players of The Classical Brass Quintet who play on this recording. These distinguished musicians are good friends to Choralis and it is for both these groups that I wrote my Gloria which they premiered in The Church of the Epiphany in Washington, DC in December 2015. I have sung and conducted a number of great Glorias by the likes of Vivaldi, Poulenc, and John Rutter, and so it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I approached the writing of this piece. A few years ago, a young American singer from a children’s choir festival I was conducting said to me that she liked the piece of mine that they were singing. She then told me that she had recently sung another new piece that she really liked by ‘some guy called Vivaldi’. She asked me if I knew him. I was so struck by this, because to this young lady the piece might have been written yesterday. To her it felt fresh and communicative, and I thought, if I could emulate those feelings for just a few moments, I would be happy. Vivaldi’s Gloria was very much in my mind when I wrote my own setting.
from notes by Bob Chilcott © 2017