Vocal Essence – Hymn To Potatoes

Hymn To Potatoes And Other Choral Masterworks From
A Prairie Home Companion
With Garrison Keillor
VocalEssence Ensemble Singers
2 CDs
VocalEssence Records VECD 0605

Choral comedy? Listeners of Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor know choral comedy is not an oxymoron when it comes to the Vocal Essence Ensemble Singers. This choir has been regular guests on Prairie Home Companion and even participated in a News From Lake Wobegon story or two over the last ten years or so. Hymn To Potatoes is a 2 CD set that captures these appearances and is something that will definitely please fans of choir music, people who like funny songs, and fans of comedy in general.

Not that the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers only does funny songs. This is a real, genuine, obviously very talented choir that can shift from Ave Maria by Franz Schubert to the traditional Shenandoah (and keep a straight & voice while Keillor rips that old chestnut apart) to very good and very weird choral versions of the Archies’Sugar Sugar, Manillow’s Copacabana, and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. This is a choral group that takes its serious music and not so serious music seriously without taking itself seriously.

The trick, and Garrison Keillor and the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers conducted by Philip Brunelle master it, is to know your classics so well you can perform them with the proper respect while also poking fun at them. Listeners will definitely enjoy the fake history of Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms as told by Keillor while the choir performs their greatest hits behind him.

Philip Brunelle also plays a starring role in Holy Trinity Lutheran Seeks Music Director where Keillor tells the story of a church’s unsuccessful quest throughout the years for a good Lutheran director. As Keillor tells the story, Brunelle plays Onward Christian Soldier as various conductors like Wagner, Stravinsky, Gershwin, Sousa, Glass, Puccini, and other famous composers. That Brunelle has been able to adapt that hymn to reflect each composer’s style is simply stunning.

That there is not one bad track on this two CD set shows how great Prairie Home Companion can be but also the versatile talents of Vocal Essence. A personal favorite, aside from the hilarious story The Runaway Choir (with Sugar, Sugar and so on) and The Choral News From Lake Wobegon and its many religious songs is Song of the Sons of Bernie where the SOBs chant a hymn to male liberation.

Hymn To Potatoes is a great 2 CD set to give as a gift for any fan of classical or choral music who has a sense of humour.

Hymn To Potatoes And Other Choral Masterworks From
A Prairie Home Companion
With Garrison Keillor
VocalEssence Ensemble Singers
2 CDs
VocalEssence Records VECD 0605

TRACK LISTING

DISC ONE
1 Song of the Sons of Bernie (Franz Schubert, Garrison Keillor)
2 A Word about Schubert (Garrison Keillor)
An die Musik, Hymn to Potatoes
3 Ave Maria (Franz Schubert)
4 Dutch Calvinism: The T.U.L.I.P. Doctrine (Garrison Keillor)
Our Faithful God, We Gather Together, Doxology
5 Come Live with Me and Be My Love (John Rutter)
6 Brahms in Love (Johannes Brahms, Garrison Keillor)
Wiegenlied, Liebeslieder Walzer
7 Two Folk Songs (arr. Mansel Thomas, Anders Öhrwall)
Y Bore Glas (Early Dawning), I Denna Ljuva Sommartid (Song of Summer)
8 The  Shenandoah Syndrome (arr. Paul Gerike, Garrison Keillor)
9 Julia (Lennon/McCartney, arr. Paul Gerike, Richard Dworsky)

DISC TWO
1 The Runaway Choir (arr. Paul Gerike, Garrison Keillor)
Spring, the Sweet Spring, Sugar Sugar, Aquarius, Mandy, Bohemian Rhapsody, Karma Chameleon, Copacabana, Sunshine on My Shoulders, Memory
2 Norwegian Independence (Garrison Keillor)
Kan Du Glemme Gamle Norge, Serenade, Landkjenning, Aftensolen
3 Holy Trinity Lutheran Seeks Music Director
Garrison Keillor with Philip Brunelle at the piano
4 Beulah Land (John R. Sweney)
5 The Choral News from Lake Wobegon (Garrison Keillor)
Now Thank We All Our God, Sanctus, America the Beautiful, April Is in My Mistress’s Face, Hymn to the Trinity
6 Something (George Harrison, arr. Paul Gerike)
7 Spring Fever (Franz Schubert, Garrison Keillor)

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