3 music to punctuate Christmas

Vibrant Êkô

Of earth and sky
Anima Nostra, €15.

Founded in 2018 and directed by Caroline Semont-Gaulon, this vocal ensemble based in Occitania expresses itself entirely a cappella. Its name, taken from the Greek “to resonate” reflects the intention of creating a vibration that radiates.

A quest illustrated by a first disc, Of Earth and Sky, recorded in the cathedral of Maguelone (Hérault). “This album weaves a dialogue between the secular and the religious, by offering known, rare, or unpublished works by French composers of the 20th and 21st centuries,” summarizes the choir director.

The first titles are in fact from secular repertoires. In the surprising Heathers in the fall, by Graciane Finzi (born 1945), who opens the album, the voices merge with nature and stones, offering an almost tactile listening experience.

In the same vein, we find Yver, you are just a villain, by Charles d’Orléans, set to music by Claude Debussy, and It snowed, by Isabelle Aboulker (born in 1938).

Then comes the light of the sacred: Mater Dolorosa by Bourguignon Jacques Berthier (born in 1923 and who composed a lot for the Taizé community), and works by young artists: Hail Mary, by the Franco-Ukrainian Dimitri Tchesnokov (born in 1982), and the captivating Exsultet, by Christopher Gibert (born in 1993), described as “a hymn of the night and of the Resurrection”.

Eyoum Nganguè