Latest Updates - James MacMillan

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Comment by Gill Sans SUBS:

The choice of the brutal image for the cover illustration of this record is explained by the text of Cantos Sagrados (sacred Songs). "Identity" is about finding unidentified mutilated bodies on a river bank, and is an appropriately violent musical setting.
The text was written by contemporary Chilean poet Ariel Dorfman, being about the killings in the coup when Pinochet's forces overthrew Allende, and the subsequent disappearances.
The illustration is El Tres De Mayo by Francisco Goya, portraying the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's occupation of Madrid, May 1808.

The two composers complement each other in style and quality on this compilation, MacMillan having studied under Leighton in Edinburgh. None of the tracks is yet on YT, but you can find a recording of Identity, made by Christopher Bell and the National Youth Choir of Scotland, which makes this recording by Spicer sound very slow by comparison.

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Comment by Gill Sans SUBS:

[YouTube Video]