Phos Hilaron

from, Evensong Suite
for Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon and Piano

A moment of transcendent grace.

 

Phos Hilaron, total duration ca. 3 minutes
Evensong Suite, Total duration ca. 17 minutes (1999)
Published by Activist Music (ASCAP).
Commissioned in 1999 by St. Bede's Episcopal Church
in Mar Vista, California.
Six movement work: "Prelude," "Phos Hilaron,"
"Magnificat," "Nunc Dimittis," "Ascendit Deus,"
and "Postlude."
45 pages, 8.5" x 11".

 

Premiered in May 1999 in Los Angeles, CA.
by Brice Martin, flute; Charles Boito, clarinet;
Carolyn Beck, bassoon and Frank Basile, piano,
in the context of the Evensong evening prayer church service
for which it was composed.

Recorded in June 1999 by Brice Martin, flute;
Charles Boito, clarinet; Carolyn Beck, bassoon
and Frank Basile, piano.

Audio clips performed by Brice Martin, flute;
Charles Boito, clarinet; Carolyn Beck, bassoon
and Frank Basile, piano.

 

Phos Hilaron is featured on the 2007 Innova Recordings CD, Notes from the Kelp (innova 683). Click CD for more info.

 

 

 

 

"...[Phos Hilaron] is so subdued in full-frontal music-ness... it's expressed beautifully. "

— Dennis Bathory-Kitsz

 

 

"Phos Hilaron... is a harmonic statement of great purity and simplicity, a circularly drifting cloud of winds and piano."

— Tobias Fischer, Tokafi

 

 

"Phos Hilaron (Gracious Light) is the second movement of Ms. Shapiro’s 1999 six-movement Evensong Suite, and is scored for flute, clarinet, bassoon, and piano. This lovely Anglican liturgical piece celebrates, within its liturgical Evensong service context, “the last vesper light of a setting sun,” as Ms. Shapiro puts it. But as with all the works on this CD, its putative meaning is malleable, and outside of its liturgical setting one should feel perfectly free to assign to it anything whatsoever it might call to mind."

— A.C. Douglas, Sounds & Fury

 

 

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