Genesis 2022

When creators f<ck with how we experience time and space, great fictions emerge: Clive Barker's Imajica, Andrei Tarkovsky's sci-fi classic Solaris, and Godard's Alphaville. But what happens to artists when the flow of time gets f^cked up IRL? When an hour stretches into eternity, and the voices in your head begin to echo through empty rooms?

Once again The Sixteen and the Genesis Foundation have teamed up to bring premiere recordings of a fascinating selection of new choral commissions to audiences worldwide. The five new choral works on this album – by James MacMillan, Will Todd, Anna Semple, Eoghan Desmond and Lisa Robertson – all grew from a meditation by St John Henry Newman. Canonised in October 2019, Newman's writings represent a rich and thought-provoking legacy and, alongside the new works presented, are immortalized in three well-known hymns and Sir Edward Elgar’s exquisite elegy They are at rest. Also included are two of Elgar’s psalm settings – Great is the Lord and Give unto the Lord. These are monumental works for choir and organ, full of grandeur and drama, but also inherently simple. The album ends with a Bonus track by Bob Chilcott - also a Genesis Foundation commission - based on Psalm 139.