This album is a sequel to the award-winning 2013 two-disc set "Celebrating Wendell Berry in Music," featuring 1) Wendell Berry reading his poetry; 2) choral and art song settings by classical composer Andrew Maxfield; and 3) folk/blues music by Grammy-nominee Eric Bibb. You might have heard this featured on public radio. Volume 2, "All The Earth Shall Sing," includes more lush choral and art song settings by Andrew Maxfield, as well as new recordings of Mr. Berry, National Humanities Medal recipient, reading his poetry. Read more about the pieces below. --- "This is for all fans of Wendell Berry, as well as choral and folk-blues fans." —Politics & Prose, Washington DC "I want to thank you for In Song and Shade. Just this Wednesday I drove from my home in upstate New York to my family homestead in Maine. I spent the first hour or so listening to the alternating Beauty of Mr. Berry reading his poems and your music. The morning was sun filled, and the early fall leaves were beautiful. I really needed to hear Mr. Berry's words, and your music. It really touched a deep part of my heart. Thank you." —Spencer C., customer “[Wendell Berry] has received numerous awards, but never anything like this tribute, which puts Berry’s words to music—in two distinct formats, each succeeding admirably.” — Dan Forte, Vintage Guitar Magazine “Maxfield’s settings of Wendell Berry’s texts are fresh and innovative …text and music are wedded beautifully together in every piece from the most contemplative and poignant to the powerfully dramatic, from lively dance tunes to simple prayers.” —Brady R. Allred, Artistic Director & Conductor, Salt Lake Choral Artists “... high quality, meaningful, valuable ; it’s a good fit for public radio listeners.” —Stephanie Elkins, Wisconsin Public Radio --- ABOUT THE MUSIC (Selected notes by composer ANDREW MAXFIELD) For the Future If you’re familiar with the first installment of Celebrating Wendell Berry in Music, you might notice that I’ve repeated some material here and wonder why. When I create an album, my goal is to create a sequence of recordings that flow well and that feel complete. In this case, the album leads with For the Future because the piece that follows it makes reference to it melodically—can you spot the references? Not again in this flesh & A gracious Sabbath stood here When I visited the Berrys at their farm in 2012, I thought I had come prepared for everything. I had duplicate copies of the poems that Wendell had agreed to read. I had two different audio recording devices in case one failed. But after reading “A gracious Sabbath stood here while they stood…,” Wendell caught me off guard. “How are they going to know who they are?” he asked, referring to the “they” mentioned in the first line and throughout the poem he had just read. I shrugged. I hadn’t ever paid attention to that detail; I just loved the words and was acting on the music I heard in the text. He clarified that the subject of the poem was introduced in the poem that preceded it chronologically, and so he found his own copy of A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 and graciously read “Not again in this flesh will I see,” numbered “1985, I” in the Sabbath poems sequence. This experience was a gift, though it took me several years for the creative clarity to manifest itself. As I read it, this text meditates on different kinds of losses. Some losses we can’t avoid, such as “...women and men, days and trees I will not know again,” and so we take these memories as comforts when needed. Some losses, such as what we blight with our greed and blindness, we can avoid but usually don’t, and so I take these lines as a caution and reminder to act well. This piece now forms an extended introduction to “A gracious Sabbath,” which follows it without pause (attacca in musical terms). It also means that my newest writing now flows into the first piece I wrote for the project, nearly 10 years ago. To create a more coherent connection between these two musical expressions, I decided to continue the string quartet accompaniment through both pieces, emphasizing the connection in the text as well. To sit and look at light-filled leaves Whether you read the story of Eden as history or mythology, one thing is clear: it didn’t last. Whatever bucolic conviviality may have characterized Creation at its beginning gave way to opposing forces—good and evil—that required humankind to make meaningful choices and evoked what C.S. Lewis calls “the problem of pain,” which is to say, simply, that pain is necessary. But, beyond necessary, pain was new once, too. When I was studying for this project, I passed over this poem several times, dismissing it for the idyllic, perhaps saccharine, tone that predominates all but the last line—wouldn’t it be silly to spend so much musical time dwelling on all this radiance? But the last line puts it all into perspective for me, and it catalyzed the musical structure that you hear: rosy-cheeked harmonies, inspired by German part songs, followed, finally, by Abraham’s knife. One household, high and low This text caught my eye early in my idea-gathering process for the Wendell Berry music project. Not only were there references to singing, which felt serendipitous, but the poem began with an invitation: come. “... come, / Let us meet here together, / Members one of another …” This felt to me like a call to worship and commune, which led my imagination very quickly to the exuberant singing traditions and unique sounds of The Kentucky Harmony and The Sacred Harp. I imagined myself being invited into a small, rural church or a tent service and joining a choir of fellow amatuer singers, which I am. (Berry refers to himself as an amateur poet, “working for the love of the work and to [his] own satisfaction …” Those seem like good criteria for joining a choir!) I love the imagery of a unified household, “high and low,” and hope we can all experience that kind of unity. Here where the world is being made To understand the music for this piece, you have to visit Ireland. My wife and I were living in Castletroy, Ireland, while she studied at the University of Limerick, and our apartment was a stone’s throw from the River Shannon and its surrounding estuary. I would wake up early from time to time, bundle up, and walk to the middle of a bridge that connects Counties Limerick and Clare, and recite this poem to the waterfowl, who were my only companions. Birdsong, in fact, plays a prominent role in the text, and the callings/answerings are present in the music. “Here”—not someplace else—is a recurring sound in Berry’s work. Here. Right where I'm standing. The Necessity of Faith “The Necessity of Faith” had been ringing in my ears for several years. Not only do I love the text—which reads with the simplicity, sincerity, and severity of a Puritan headstone—but also because I had written and recorded a very unsatisfying setting of that text in 2012! This project gave me a shot at redemption, and I’m pleased to hear Rex Kocherhan’s performance of a rewritten setting ringing henceforth.