SAINT LOUIS
PASSIONS
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Released for Valentine’s Day, this 2026 recording features many premières of Chamber Chorus commissions, offset by three settings of Catullus’s famous love couplet, Odi et amo and a Lassus madrigal. Departing from their customary a cappella repertoire, the choir collaborates with pianist, Diana Umali, in a song cycle by Francis Pott that takes its title – Ardor amoris – from Lassus’s text.
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Release date: 2026
Tracks
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1. Alleluia! A new work is come on hand — Carter Datz
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2. Seeking you — Kerensa Briggs
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3. Love after Chagall — Scóirse Bodley
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4. Forte soporifera (LV 270) — Orlandus Lassus
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*5. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Ardor amoris, 1) — Francis Pott
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6. Odi et amo — Ugis Praulins
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7. Hurt — Trent Reznor, arr. Melissa Dunphy
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*8. Renouncement (Ardor amoris, 2) — Francis Pott
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9. Miss me, but let me go — Sasha Johnson Manning
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10. Carolina (from Where the Crawdads Sing) — Taylor Swift, arr. Orin Johnson
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*11. To Electra (Ardor amoris, 3) — Francis Pott
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12. : Odi et amo (from Catulli carmina)— Carl Orff​
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*13. Wild Nights! (Ardor amoris, 4) — Francis Pott
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14. Tonight I dance alone — Mårten Jansson
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*15. Stillness (Ardor amoris, 5) — Francis Pott
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16. Odi et amo — Jakob Handl
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17. Right where it belongs — Trent Reznor, arr. Melissa Dunphy
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*18. If thou must love me (Ardor amoris, 6) — Francis Pott
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* Diana Umali, piano​
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All tracks are world premiere recordings except for tracks 6, 12, and 16.
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CD Review
Released to coincide with Valentine's Day, this latest recording from the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus offers an imaginative meditation on love in all its guises—passionate and tender, sacred and profane, timeless and contemporary. Under Philip Barnes's direction, one of America's finest choral ensembles navigates a programme spanning five centuries, from Renaissance masters to commissions by living composers, several receiving their première recordings.
… Barnes elicits singing as warm as the subject matter itself. The choir's tone is consistently beautiful, their precision, diction and dynamic shading are executed with passion and intelligence. Balance and blend are exemplary throughout, whether navigating Pott's intimate word-painting or the more robust demands of Mårten Jansson's Tonight I Dance Alone and Handl's Odi et amo. The ensemble conveys each piece's distinctive character with remarkable sensitivity, drawing the listener into their expressive world.
Diana Umali's well-judged piano accompaniment in the final Pott song provides the perfect valediction to a disc that celebrates both the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus's longstanding commitment to new music—their Composer-in-Residence scheme has nurtured talents including Manning, Melissa Dunphy, Jansson and Briggs—and the enduring power of love itself, captured across half a millennium of musical expression. –Andrew Palmer​​