Customer Reviews

Blue Wheat

5 star:		(8)
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A project like this one inevitably highlights the skill of arrangers, and Dale Warland has selected some of the most talented anywhere. Most of these selections will be familiar to listeners, but I doubt most people have heard, for example, "Red River Valley" in Carol Barnett's haunting version here, and ditto for her magnificent "Deep River."

The disc opens with a spectacular, panoramic "Shenandoah" that takes maximum advantage of the Dale Warland Singers' refined sound, and things only get better (if that's possible). Other favorites are a cheery, fizzing "Nelly Bly" and Mark Keller's strong reworking of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More."

Throughout the recording, the freshness of the arrangements is matched by the irresistible singing. This group is known for its outstanding performances and recordings, but this must be counted as one of their all-time best. The sound quality is terrific, capturing the gorgeous blend and precision of the group in a natural-sounding acoustic. Just stunning.

Minnesota, since the days of F.Melius Christiansen,is the focus of fine choral music. All those small colleges with generations of exquisitly trained singers have been cemented togather in this celebration. The sound and the selections on this album are as pure as the Mississippi leaving Lake Itasca.

I bought this CD after hearing a few of the recordings on our local NPR radio station. I was not disappointed in any of the selections. Very beautiful.

I agree with every reviewer here: I love this CD of American folk songs and ballads. The arrangements and harmonies are lovely. It's become my favorite relaxation tape, music that helps me unwind and mellow out. I especially love "The Water is Wide" and "Shenandoah." The only track I dislike is their jaunty interpretation of "Hard Times." Emmylou Harris does a sad, wailing version of the song that is much truer to the spirit of what Stephen Foster wrote. But, hey, with 18 of 19 songs pure heaven, why quibble? This and any of the Dale Warland Singers' other CDs make great gifts for friends or loved ones. Highly recommended!

The rendition of "Red River Valley" alone is worth the price of admission!

The Warland singers employ an incredible number of classical and romantic techniques in harmonizing these old familiar songs, such as counterpoint, fugue and, most incredibly, diminished and augmented harmonies! Just listen to RRV and you will be blown away by the inherit beauty of this old Western song!

Robert De Cormier's remarkable arrangement and Marie Spar Dymit's and Lynette Johnson's pure vocals of "Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier" are well worth the price of the entire CD.

The Dale Warland Singers are my benchmark by which I judge all other choirs. The uniformity of sound, blend, and precise entrances, uniformity are incredible - almost inhuman. Excluding the all male Chanticleer from the roster, this was the finest choir in America. Now that they have broken up, buy all of their CD's you won't be disappointed!

The Dale Warland Singers (DWS) are among the relatively few musical professionals, who by their aesthetic standards and demonstrated artistry, have taken the less traveled and narrow road to exemplary artistic excellence.

The sound quality and acoustics are excellently engineered in this 20-bit original recording. The most delicately blend and inflection of the singers' voice can be heard. This sheaf of choral works has once existed in real space and time in the kaleidoscopic folklife of past generations. In recording the "Blue Wheat", the 40-member DWS, the creme de la creme of professional choral ensembles, has elevated the common oral tradition of American folk music into a rarified choral art form a capella "in the style of the chapel."

If the soul of the DWS is a capella singing, then Warland and the arrangers are the wings of the same soul. Among the kapellmeisters whose arrangements have graced this folksong anthology are the late Norman Luboff and Roger Wagner. Also included in this album are contemporary arrangements by other esteemed composers: John Rutter (conductor of The Cambridge Singers), Carol Barnett (the DWS resident composer from 1992 to 2001), and Stephen Paulus.

Gertrude Stein is famous for saying of her childhood home, Oakland, California, "When you get there, there's no there there." Purportedly, Stein opined this city by the San Francisco Bay lacked a defining sense of place. Bel canto notwithstanding, the folk melodies of "Blue Wheat" invoke a longing for something no longer possible. The abyss between the America today and the its past is impossible to bridge. Already, we have yielded to the abstractness of political correctness. Our past is either neglected, actively destroyed, or selectively museumed. We do not live in an understood land and culture. There is no there here in the presence of this music. It is only the poignancy of the moment that these beautifully rendered tunes live in our mind. We have to accept this reality as part and parcel of our rootlessness.

If the Oakland Raiders do make it to and win the Superbowl in 2003, there is a there there for some in the football community, albeit fleeting.