News

Phil Kline's John the Revelator To Be Released March 24th

February 27, 2009

On March 24th, Cantaloupe Records will release John the Revelator, the latest recording by Phil Kline. The album, a Mass whose title alludes to the Blind Willie Johnson song (famously covered by another bluesman, Son House), contains 16 songs recorded in August 2007 at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village and features Ethel and the vocal ensemble Lionheart as performers. Regarding the thematic structure of the piece, Phil wrote:

My concept was to set the traditional Latin Ordinary (the parts of the Mass that remain the same from week to week) for chorus alone, and to add my own set of Propers (the parts that change according to season) using a variety of texts, and to have those sections accompanied by the string quartet. The texts I ultimately chose suggest a narrative of redemption in a blighted world. Several are from the Old Testament, including two from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Rather than use the New Testament apocalypse of Revelation, I chose one by the American poet David Shapiro, whose image of indifferently falling snow recalls the ashes falling from the skies of lower Manhattan. Offered as a prayer, Samuel Beckett's monologue The Unnamable brilliantly portrays the the struggle of the mind in present tense. And while Dark Was the Night has no text that can be heard, it is a fantasy on Willie Johnson's 1927 recording of an old hymn depicting Jesus' doubt at the Passion, paraphrased in wordless moaning.

To learn more about the album, tracklisting, and to listen to a downloadable mp3 sample of "The Man Who Knows Misery," please click here.