Multi-faith Mass for San Francisco's Chanticleer

THE SAN FRANCISCO-based classical vocal ensemble Chanticleer are breaking controversial ground with their new album 'And On Earth, Peace: A Chanticleer Mass'. Director Joseph Jennings invited five composers, Douglas J Cuomo, Kamran Ince, Shulamit Ran, Ivan Moody and Michael McGlynn, to write different pieces of a Mass. The result is being released by Warner Classics in May following the Mass's world premiere in New York at the Metropolitan Museum. Jennings told Billboard magazine, "What we hoped was to create a Mass that embraces many musical - and spiritual - impulses. As I envisioned it, it wouldn't even just be limited to the Christian faith." Two composers set texts from their own cultural and belief backgrounds, Ince drawing upon words written by 13th century poet Jalaluddin Rumi, who followed Sufism, a form of Islam, and Ran who utilised, amongst other things, Jewish material.