Northern Lights (Male Choir)

The ecstatic collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere known as the 'aurora borealis' is the subject of Northern Lights, commissioned in 2012 by the Choir of the West at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. E?envalds combines a Latvian folksong, sung by a solo tenor, with less fearful, and factual, observations of the Northern Lights by two nineteenth-century Arctic explorers, Charles Francis Hall and Fridtjof Nansen. In a lilting triple-time metre throughout, with tuned glasses played by the singers adding an unearthly aura at salient points, the music is full of wonder, with an especially dramatic moment of revelation early on. Twice, a moment of special transcendence is summoned up by the gentle sound of chimes and, after a return of the opening folksong, it is they who have the last word in a quiet, but questioning, apotheosis of magical bell-sounds. -from notes by Gabriel Jackson ? 2015 This version for Male Choir released in 2019.