HomeSacred Choral Music
Review in "Caduceus Magazine" (issue 37)
"Jenni Roditi's response to the traditions of Tibet is devotional rather than esoteric (as in the Singing Bowls of Tibet by Frank Perry). Her concerns are more human as the material she works with primarily is the voice. Musically she has grown out of the contemporary classical tradition but she has forged her own unique musical language from other influences including folk music and her work as a voice therapist.
Her 1992 opera INANNA based on the myth of the Sumerian Goddess showed a skill in setting words that many more established composers could learn from. The piece on this album Devotion That Moves the Heart - A prayer Calling the Lama from Afar, takes a prayer written in the last century by a Tibetan Lama known as Jamgon Kongtrul the Great and translated into English by The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, and Michele Martin. But the translation is more than that of the words.
Tibetan is a syllabic language and is chanted in a steady rhythmic fashion. The rhythms of English however are intricate and idiosyncratic. Jenni has used an organ sound on a keyboard to create the rhythmic pulse which contains the whole piece and carries it forward. The English words are sung by a choir of eight voices and dance in a joyful syncopated web over the pulse, the main melodic line being carried by the alto voices in a style of singing that is closer to folk music than the operatic tradition. The resulting piece in its two movements is utterly sensual to the ear in its sounds and patterning whilst speaking to the heart and pointing to an ecstatic world of peace."
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