Brazelton, Kitty – “Ecclesiastes – a Modern Oratorio” – [Innova/American Composers]

Kitty Brazelton is a composer, performer, and music professor at Bennington College. An oratorio is music for instruments and voice that tells a sacred story, this one is based on Ecclesiastes 3 from the King James Version and also from Brazelton’s own translations. It is called “modern” due to use of found sounds and drones from the laptop and other techniques that are more recent.

The music for voices, strings, percussion, bells and other background is beautiful, often very haunting and unsettling. Some tracks remind me of aboriginal Australian music, even Tuvan throat singing.

Notes:
– Words “to every thing there is a season” will be familiar from the Pete Seeger 1959 tune that became the huge Byrds hit “Turn, Turn, Turn” in 1965.
– Ecclesiastes is pronounced “ih-klee-zee-AS-teez”
– Computer readable pdf file on CD with more information.