Description
Item No. 008509
sung by the Boston Byzantine Choir
in English
Released in 2013, this CD has a varied selection of hymns presented by the choir of St. Mary’s Orthodox Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
It features music from throughout Lent, including:
“Open to Me the Gates of Repentance” (from Sunday Lenten Matins);
“O Lord of Hosts” and “God Is with Us” (from Great Compline);
“Let My Prayer Arise” and
“Now the Hosts of Heaven” (from Presanctified Liturgy);
various Troparia for the Sundays of Lent;
and portions of the Akathist service.
Since its inception in 1993 by Charles R. Marge, the Boston Byzantine Choir has endeavored to make Byzantine chant and the Orthodox Christian faith accessible to the English-speaking world. The choir grew out of the rich chanting tradition of St Mary Orthodox Church with The Very Rev. Antony Hughes, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The choir has sung at universities, parishes and music festivals throughout New England.
In 2007, The Boston Byzantine Choir was honored to participate in "The Ascending Voice," a symposium of sacred a cappella music held at Pepperdine University. The choir has also sung multiple times for Orthodox Education Day at St. Vladimir's Seminary and the Sacred Music Institute of the Antiochian Archdiocese.
The Rev. Professor Nicholas M. Kastanas of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, MA, wrote that:
"whenever the Boston Byzantine Choir membership, under the masterful guidance of Maestro Charles Marge, produces a CD of God-inspired hymns, we are anointed with yet another taste of spiritual fragrance, as the liturgical prayer so confirms. This fifth CD offering...of Lenten hymns is a collage of spiritually acoustical hymns on the 'Pilgrimage to Pascha,' as Fr. Alexander Schmemann, of blessed memory, so proclaimed."
Format: CD
God Is With Us
Let My Prayer Arise
O Taste and See
Thy Pure Image
Awed by the Beauty