James Jordan writes: “I think when life challenges us, our common human tendency is to look toward the stars for wisdom and answers, for the abundances and peace that sometimes one’s focus toward the heavens brings to us. Looking toward the stars and the heavens often clears our vision so we can feel authentically with our hearts. Carols during Advent and Christmastime seem to also embody that spirit of mystical searching for hope and wonder. And perhaps there is no better musical spiritual entry point for all of this than chant. So, this recording leads you musically through the journey, from simple chant to stories in the carols. And all of the music on the album reflects our hope for the future as we climb a crooked ladder leading to, hopefully, a brighter new time for our beloved Westminster college, and our lives beyond the pandemic. Our desire is to see a glimmer of light behind what seems a very closed door. This album offers music for personal reflection, with the hope that these sounds can provide for each of us “scattered” new light.”

The music chosen for this recording is strangely and poignantly relevant, I believe, for each of us. We all now understand “The Fruit of Silence,” a motet that reminds us to visit those beliefs which are most sacred in the work by Cortlandt Matthews, or now, a deeply personal Requiem by Peter Relph that in reflection, remembers the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in this pandemic. And then there is the LaVoy work “O Great Beyond.” While all great texts speak to the universality of the human condition and, if are truthful, are timeless. Particularly the George Fox text set by Jackson Hill and the Tagore text set by LaVoy give us messages to reinforce the humanness of each of us for hope. Two works on this disc poignantly remind us of the passing of life in the Relph Requiem and especially the final movement of “O Great Beyond.” May these words give comfort to all those who endured the deepest of Life’s losses during our shared Pandemic journey. For, so many loved ones, goodbyes were said in silence, and alone.