VocalEssence Chorus & Ensemble Singers; Sonja Tenglblad; orchestra

While on a trip to France my collaborator, Clay Zambo, visited one particular church whose décor he wryly described as “all glitter, all the time – clearly designed to entertain the illiterate congregants of the era in which it was constructed.” But on his way out, a friend pointed to a little alcove where there hung an utterly human portrait of Mary and the baby Jesus. He was so struck by the image of the new mother that he immediately wrote the poem that evolved into “A Mother’s Carol”— a meditation on the idea that even in the most ordinary human circumstances one can find the divine. -- Scott Ethier