Ted Hearne’s new album Katrina Ballads was just released last Friday through New Amsterdam Records:

https://www.newamsterdamrecords.com/#Album/Katrina_Ballads

The album is something of a cantata which uses for its text primary source materials from people’s reactions to hurricane Katrina. It is a powerful and moving work which takes advantage of the variety of compositional techniques available today, and always in a way that feels natural. Throughout Katrina Ballads the sounds of jazz, rock, gospel, and avant garde concert music flow freely and convincingly between each other as if stylistic boundaries did not exist. The piece is perhaps best illustrated by a moment in the second to last movement when tenor Isaiah Robinson, singing words of Kanye West, belts out in a melismatic R&B style, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” and to really bring the point home, this collapses into a Gospel chant on the text, clapping and all – a powerful message, and a powerful piece. The singers and chamber orchestra, (or band), provide a fantastic and virtuosic performance for the album, and the recording is mixed for a very effective, full, ‘produced’ sound. I highly recommend it.