Store: Albums
Northern Harmony & Village Harmony
FORERUNNER OF THE SUN
2010. Northern Harmony
Northern Harmony's tour in the autumn of 2008 included five weeks of performances in the UK and two weeks in France and Switzerland. Special guest singer Shergil Pirtskhelani (Ensemble Zedashe) from Sighnaghi, Georgia directed most of the Georgian numbers in the program. The album starts out with high-powered South African gospel and doesn't let up. Traditional/contemporary American shape-note (including Mear from William Duckworth's Southern Harmony), Corsican, Georgian, Ukrainian, gospel quartet/blues songs, and the eerily beautiful Missa Brevis by contemporary British composer Edmund Rubbra.
Lord, I Walked
2008. Northern Harmony
Northern Harmony's 2007 European tour began with two weeks in residence in Corsica, where Jean Etienne Langianni of Ensemble Tavagna taught the piquant set of Coriscan songs featured on this album. Lord, I Walked also features gospel quartet and Appalachian harmonies (led by Ken Shimizu), traditional Georgian, South African and Genoese trallalero (led by Patty Cuyler), Balkan and Ukranian songs (led by Eva Primak), shape-note and renaissance pieces (led by Larry Gordon), and a Quebecois song (led by Will Thomas).
Best of Village Harmony, 2007-2008
2009. Village Harmony.
This dynamic two-disc album captures memorable performances by twelve different Village Harmony traveling ensembles in New England and abroad during 2007 and 2008. The New England traveling sessions are by teenagers ages 12-19, while the overseas camps--performing in Corsica, Caucasus Georgia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Ukraine and Italy--include a mixture of students and adults. Remarkably, all the ensembles are non-auditioned.
One Sweet Chord
2007. Northern Harmony
A brilliant album of performances from the Northern Harmony 2005 tour of Europe and the UK. A powerful, polished CD, with especially fine Bulgarian and traditional American recordings.
Best of Village Harmony 2005-2006
2007, Village Harmony
The best of live performance takes from Village Harmony concerts during the summer seasons in 2005 and 2006. The overseas camps included ensembles singing in Caucasus Georgia, Corsica, Germany, Bosnia, and Bulgaria. Double CD album, a sterling collection of songs.
From Pole to Pole
2005, Northern Harmony.
This album is a record of Northern Harmony’s two-month tour through the UK in the spring of 2004. Includes a lively set of contemporary shape-note compositions by Don Jamison, Toby Tenenbaum, Seth Houston, Moira Smiley and Chandler York; traditional Shaker and shape-note tunes; as well as a rich selection of songs from Bulgaria, Republic of Georgia and South Africa.
Best of Village Harmony 2003-2004
2005, Village Harmony.
This album contains live recordings from both the traveling summer sessions and from the school year group from 2003 and 2004. Spirited performances by twelve different ensembles, with music from Bulgaria, Georgia, Corsica, South Africa, Nigeria, Germany and America.
Where Everything is Music
2002, Northern Harmony.
Recorded in the wake of Northern Harmony's 2002 US tour, this album features poems by Emily Dickinson set to music by Neely Bruce, poems by the Sufi mystic Rumi set to music by Toby Tennenbaum, and three pieces by the 15th-century Italian poet-composer Leonardo Giustiniani. Also enlivening the CD are songs from Bulgaria and the Caucasus Republic of Georgia, and a stunning set of Corsican songs.
Songs from the Northern Harmony songbook
Bayley Hazen Singers, Village Harmony and Friends. Led by Larry Gordon
An anthology of recordings from the now out-of-print albums Honor the the Hills (1989), Northern Harmony (1990) and Emerald Stream (1992). All songs are taken from our songbook of old & new shapenote songs — the Northern Harmony.
Heavenly Meeting
1995, Northern Harmony.
In 1994, Larry Gordon led a three-month performing tour with a remarkable group of singers, including Peter and Mary Alice Amidon, Mary Cay Brass, Tim Eriksen, and many Bayley-Hazen Singers and Village Harmony veterans. An eclectic yet related collection of 'folk' tunes: shape-note, English West Gallery, gospel, and Balkan village music.
The Enchantment of Heavenly Love: Music of Neely Bruce
2000, Village Harmony and Friends.
Neely Bruce is a remarkably gifted and prolific composer, with hundreds of works to his credit in a wide range of styles, from rock opera to classical piano, from simple parlor songs to ultra avant garde vocal techniques. He chooses interesting and graphic texts from unusual sources (the works of Emily Dickinson, the King James Bible, Shaker tunes, and the Old Baptist Hymnal, to name a few), while capturing the traditional shape-note sound and rhythmic drive.