Review: Choral Artists transform spirituals

By TOM STRINI Journal Sentinel music critic Sacred music — brand new, fairly new, old, and old newly arranged — opened the Milwaukee Choral Artists season Friday at the First Unitarian Society. Sharon Hansen led her 19 singers and four guest instrumentalists through 22 numbers, most of them bite-sized but some of substantial length. The scoring ranged from a cappella choir to choir plus piano, percussion, violin and horn. The religious sentiments ranged from Hindu to Jewish to European Christian to African-American spirituals. Paula Foley Tillen’s “A Prayer for Peace” and Bernard van Beurden’s “The Congregator Has Said” were composed for Hansen’s elite, professional women’s choir and premiered at this well-attended concert. Predictably, some of the spirituals were over-arranged, with the peculiar effect of turning them both... [read full story]