THE GRAMOPHONE - Editor's Choice:
"Gloriously sung by this superb choir, Antony Pitts's collection of choral music has the potential to be a real runaway success..."
"...as ideal a group.....as he is likely to find this side of the Heaven to which so much of his music aspires." (read more)

Seven Letters
and other sacred choral music by Antony Pitts

catalogue number: HYPERION CDA67507
release date: June 2005
retail price: £13.99
cover picture is by David Jenks: Finale
availability: all good record shops and online

"The Hebrew word ‘Amen’ means both ‘truly’ and ‘may it be so’; the last of the seven letters from the Book of Revelation echoes both meanings: ‘These are the words of the Amen.’

Adoro te [3'55]
The Lord’s Prayer [3'58]
The First and Last [2'16]
Seven Letters [24'10]
O Love [3'46]
O Wisdom of God [9'38]
O Holy of Holies [4'16]
Amen [8'24]

All the texts here are sacred words – either from the Bible, or filtered through liturgical traditions of the last two thousand years – and the pieces on this recording form a sequence of personal responses to those words and the realities behind them."

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The beginning of 2005 at the BBC saw an unprecedented storm of public protest over the screening of a blasphemous musical on BBC Two and the consequent resignation of internationally award-winning BBC Radio 3 (90-93FM) producer, Antony Pitts.

Antony had worked at the BBC since just after university, starting as a secretary and ending up as a Senior Producer, and was well known for pushing back the boundaries of radio listening, creating some of the most challenging radio programmes ever broadcast. In 1995 he devised and produced an interactive radio & internet experiment for which he won the UK's most valuable industry accolade, the BT Radio Academy Award, and last year he was awarded the sought-after Prix Italia for a multi-layered collage of music and voices, A Pebble in the Pond. Throughout his time at the BBC Pitts was also conducting the early and new music ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS, receiving a Cannes Classical Award for their chart-topping release of Arvo Pärt's Passio in 2003, and composing music for the Clerks' Group, Rundfunkchor Berlin, the Swingle Singers, Westminster Cathedral, and Klaus Heymann of Naxos. In June 2005, for the first time, a complete CD of his sacred choral music is to be released on one of Britain's leading independent record labels, Hyperion.

"At the centre of this new recording is Seven Letters - thought to be the only choral setting of St John's damning indictment of the first-century Church in Asia Minor from the Book of Revelation. Antony Pitts is a distinctive new voice whose music has been premiered at Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the Philharmonie Kammermusiksaal in Berlin. Pitts's choral music combines a jazz-infused idiom within a tight structure of traditional musical form and a response to the sacred texts which is both fervent and captivatingly heart-on-sleeve..."

The words of the Seven Letters are over 1900 years old, yet speak with a remarkably contemporary voice. The Laodiceans, the last of the seven churches addressed, think they are rich in worldly terms, but do not realize that spiritually they are "wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked". Each letter ends with the urgent refrain: "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the Churches".

"...each 'letter' is declaimed by one of seven virtuosic members of TONUS PEREGRINUS over a cyclical choral backdrop which insistently increases in intensity as the work moves through the seven 'letters' of the musical scale, A to G. Such multifaceted intricacy is typical of Pitts's approach in the other pieces presented here. In each case a 'pop'-style hook provides the listener with an immediate entry point, while repeated listening allows the full scope of the musical vision gradually to unfold."

Today the sites of the seven churches are as fascinating as they are diverse: a variety of ruins from the height of the ancient Mediterranean Empires co-exist alongside modern society at a number of levels. Ephesus is one of the most stunningly preserved towns from antiquity and is no longer inhabited except by tourists and those who earn their living from them; some of the other sites are obscure provincial towns with more recent Turkish names and a modern existence that seems so different, yet is connected to the glimpsed fragments of the past; the final site of Laodicea is now a complete ruin bleakly devoid even of tourists, where the nearby natural water supply is still sickeningly lukewarm - the adjective applied to the Laodicean Christians themselves.

Seven Letters goes on sale at the beginning of June in all territories worldwide (Hyperion CDA67507). The artwork is by David Jenks, and the booklet notes are by Jeremy Summerly. Retail price is £13.99, available in all good music shops and online. For more information, or to request an interview with Antony Pitts, please email sven@tonusperegrinus.co.uk, or ring +44 (0)7771 692024.

TONUS PEREGRINUS
soprano: Rebecca Hickey, Joanna Forbes
alto: Kathryn Oswald, Alexander L’Estrange
tenor: Benjamin Rayfield, Alexander Hickey
bass: Francis Brett, Nick Flower
director: Antony Pitts

For more information on this recording, please email seven@tonusperegrinus.co.uk