alleluia (from quarantine) - Choral Arts Ensemble of Portland

This piece, performed on April 30, 2023, is alleluia (from quarantine), by Joshua Shank. It offers a striking contrast to the serene simplicity of the Cantique. Instead of four gracefully overlapping but distinct vocal parts, Shank refracts the choir’s sound like light through a prism, with sometimes over a dozen vocal lines happening at once. Instead of carefully crafted rhymes, Shank’s text consists of a single word in different moods. He has said that the word alleluia expresses varied emotions, including “gratitude…but also the growth that can come from sadness and grief over things we’ve lost.”