New music for mixed choir by Ward Swingle
(December 2008)
Ward Swingle was a founder member of the fabled vocal group Double Six in Paris in the 1960s. He then took the scat singing idea and applied it to the works of Bach, with another vocal group which became The Swingle Singers, whose early recordings won five Grammies.
Give us this day is a setting of words by Tony Vincent Isaacs, written for the Vasari Singers and their conductor Jeremy Backhouse. It is a simple homophonic setting in four parts, with a timeless quality, conveying an important message about man’s relationship with the world: ‘Give us this day / That we may cherish / The earth before it dies.’