Akathist The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Artefact Ensemble, NOVUS NY & Benedict Sheehan

• Benedict Sheehan (b. 1980): Akathist:
• 1 Sheehan: Akathist: I. First Kontakion, Incorruptible King of the Ages 02:45
• 2 Sheehan: Akathist: II. First Ikos, I Was Born in This World 05:00
• 3 Sheehan: Akathist: III. Second Kontakion, How Lovely It Is To Be Thy Guest 03:01
• 4 Sheehan: Akathist: IV. Second Ikos, We Have Seen the Sky 03:18
• 5 Sheehan: Akathist: V. Third Kontakion, The Meadow 02:58
• 6 Sheehan: Akathist: VI. Third Ikos, The Triumph of Spring 05:33
• 7 Sheehan: Akathist: VII. Fourth Kontakion, A Living Torrent 02:36
• 8 Sheehan: Akathist: VIII. Fourth Ikos, Evening 04:39
• 9 Sheehan: Akathist: IX. Fifth Kontakion, The Dark Storm Clouds of Life 03:21
• 10 Sheehan: Akathist: X. Fifth Ikos, I See Thy Heavens 06:20
• 11 Sheehan: Akathist: XI. Sixth Kontakion, How Wonderful Thy Greatness 02:47
• 12 Sheehan: Akathist: XII. Sixth Ikos, The Camp Dining Hall 04:33
• 13 Sheehan: Akathist: XIII. Seventh Kontakion, In the Wondrous Blending of Sounds 04:36
• 14 Sheehan: Akathist: XIV. Seventh Ikos, The Genius of the Human Mind 06:17
• 15 Sheehan: Akathist: XV. Eighth Kontakion, In Days of Sickness and Pain 02:40
• 16 Sheehan: Akathist: XVI. Eighth Ikos, When in Childhood 03:30
• 17 Sheehan: Akathist: XVII. Ninth Kontakion, On a Feast Day 02:21
• 18 Sheehan: Akathist: XVIII. Ninth Ikos, I Have Seen Thy Face 05:30
• 19 Sheehan: Akathist: XIX. Tenth Kontakion, Into Dust 04:06
• 20 Sheehan: Akathist: XX. Tenth Ikos, Night 04:01
• 21 Sheehan: Akathist: XXI. Eleventh Kontakion, The Cold Chains of the Centuries 03:28
• 22 Sheehan: Akathist: XXII. Eleventh Ikos, A Calm Haven in a Tortured Worl 04:40
• 23 Sheehan: Akathist: XXIII. Twelfth Kontakion, In the Faces of the Dead 03:49
• 24 Sheehan: Akathist: XXIV. Twelfth Ikos, Glory to God for All Things 08:59
• 25 Sheehan: Akathist: XXV. Thirteenth Kontakion, Receive This T 03:52
• Total Runtime 01:44:40

Info for Akathist

Benedict Sheehan’s sublime new oratorio, Akathist, was recorded last fall at New York’s historic Trinity Church with The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Artefact Ensemble, NOVUS NY and others. The groundbreaking work weaves together medieval chant, Anglo-American hymns, gospel, and jazz – offering a unique perspective on sacred music and a radically constructive response to injustice and evil. Akathist asks us to meet the world’s brokenness with gratitude and healing, and thereby to transform ourselves.

Artefact Ensemble
NOVUS NY, Downtown Voices
Benedict Sheehan, artistic director, chorus masters The Choir of Trinity Wall Street
Trinity Youth Chorus
Melissa Attebury, musical director Elaine Kelly, conductor Stephen Sands, conductor

Benedict Sheehan
Two-time GRAMMY® nominee and American Prize-winner Benedict Sheehan has been called “a choral conductor and composer to watch in the 21st century” (ConcertoNet) and “a remarkable musician” (Choral Journal). He is Artistic Director and Founder of Artefact Ensemble and the GRAMMY®-nominated Saint Tikhon Choir, and the current Artist in Residence at St. Tikhon’s Monastery in Pennsylvania. His compositions have been praised as “luminous and uplifting” (Choir & Organ), “evocative” (Gramophone), “hypnotically beautiful” (MusicWeb International), “fresh and vibrant” (Audiophile Audition), and “otherworldly” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), and his performances as a conductor have likewise been described as “technically flawless” (Musical America), “choral singing at its most exquisite” (HRAudio), “extravagantly beautiful” (The American Organist), and “beyond praise for excellence” (Fanfare Magazine).

Elaine Kelly
studied at Maynooth University and Queen's University Belfast. Her research focuses on the intersections between music, politics, culture, and intellectual history in nineteenth and twentieth-century Germany. She is particularly interested in the German Democratic Republic, and has published extensively on the relationship between culture and politics in the state. She is author of Composing the Canon in the German Democratic Republic: Narratives of Nineteenth-Century Music (Oxford University Press, 2014), editor together with Amy Wlodarski of Art Outside the Lines: New Perspectives on GDR Art Culture (Rodopi, 2011), and editor with Derek B. Scott and Markus Mantere of Confronting the National in the Musical Past (Routledge, 2018). She has published articles in venues such as the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Opera Quarterly, Kritika, Nineteenth-Century Music, Twentieth-Century Music, and Music & Letters.

Her current research is concerned with the global contexts of the GDR. She is working on a monograph that develops a model of how musical diplomacy operated at the peripheries of the Cold War by charting the musical relations that developed between the GDR and various postcolonial countries.

Elaine is co-editor of the Journal of Musicology and a vice president of the Royal Musical Association (2019-23). She was head of the Reid School of Music from 2017-20, and is currently a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellow (2021-24), working on a project entitled: “Musical Diplomacy at the Peripheries: East Germany and the Postcolonial World.”

Melissa Attebury
was appointed in December 2023 as Director of Music at Trinity Wall Street. She is the first female appointed to this role in Trinity’s long history. Previously, she served as Director of Music Education and Outreach, a program she built upon since 2011, serving over 750 school age children in the public schools each season, as well training many young singers in the Trinity church community as conductor of the Trinity Youth Chorus.

During her next chapter at Trinity she will continue her work in music education, creating educational offerings with Trinity’s collaborative partners and raising up the next generation of young musicians. She is an advocate of lesser known composers and creating space for new works, and will revitalize a culture of congregational singing within the Trinity community. Melissa serves as principal conductor of the Trinity Choir, NOVUS, and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra.

Melissa originally trained as pianist and classical singer, adding conducting later in her career. Praised by the New York Times as a “rich-toned alto who brought a measure of depth to her performance”, Melissa Attebury appears regularly as soloist in concert and oratorio across the country. She is in particular demand for her skill in music of the Baroque and is a regular soloist in Messiah, the Bach passions, and other choral masterworks. Ms. Attebury is a featured soloist on the Grammy-nominated Israel in Egypt with the Trinity Choir, Ralf Yusuf Gawlick’s Missa Gentis Humanae for 8 voices, and the choral works of Trevor Weston. A skilled ensemble musician, she is heard on two Pulitzer Prize-winning works; Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields and Ellen Reid’s Prism, as well as Trinity’s Bach Motets.

She has conducted performances at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, with Bang on a Can and the Long Play Festival, and regularly for many events and services at Trinity Church.

This album contains no booklet.