The Clarion Choir
Jessica Beebe, soprano
Nacole Palmer, soprano
Raha Mirzadegan, soprano
Mikki Sodergren, alto
John Ramseyer, tenor
Oliver Mercer, tenor
Glenn Miller, bass,
Jonathan Woody, bass
Steven Fox, conductor

GRAMMY® nomination - Best Choral Performance

Debuted at #2 on Billboard Traditional Classical Charts

Featured in The New York Times and BBC Music Magazine

Recording of the Month, MusicWeb International 5 Diapasons in Diapason (France)

"[Fox] and Clarion have presented the Vespers often at New Year in New York and recorded it beautifully for Pentatone.”
– James Oestreich, The New York Times

"Fox has lived with the work for over 20 years, gaining an intimate understanding of its ever-changing textures... Fox 'plays' his choir, moulding the 32 singers into a single expressive instrument, attuned to his silkily nuanced dynamics and careful husbanding of climaxes...Lovingly sculpted, the refulgent soundscapes glow."
– BBC Music Magazine

"Celebrating the 150th year of Sergei Rachmaninoff's birth, the Clarion Choir and Artistic Director Steven Fox present a seminal treatment of the composer's All Night Vigil, Op. 37 “Vespers”(1915). Recorded at NYC's Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in January 2020, the choir's rendering mesmerizes for the full measure of its seventy-four minutes." 
– Textura

"The result here is impressive, enchanting in many places and with unspectacular noblesse. The Clarion Choir designs the adapted and newly composed prayers with intellectual clarity and transparency." 
– Roland H. Dippel, Concerti (Germany)

"Steven Fox, leader of the Clarion Choir, has been living with this music for more than 20 years, and the choir’s exquisite performance on this new recording evidences artistic understanding and scholarship as much as it does musical feeling and skill. One of the great achievements (and pleasures) of the All-Night Vigil is the organization of the moving parts - voices stepping up or down against a bed of other voices holding steady, small glidings up or down where you wouldn't expect them, individual voices breaking against the flow, and choir sections emerging in different colors, as if through a prism. Under Fox's leadership, and with the benefit of excellent acoustics and top-notch production, The Clarion Choir makes a crowning statement with this release."  
– Jon Sobel, blogcritics.org

"The 32-member strong New York based Clarion Choir impress on the work just the right level of pious stoicism it calls for, whilst the crystal clarity and perfectly gauged blend of their voices as in Rejoice, O Virgin, permeates the music with all-embracing light."  
– Jean-Ives Duperron, Classical Music Sentinel

"The Clarion Choir shines in every way, with a control of breath and phrasing which amazes, and a range of dynamics always at the service of the word." 
– Jerónimo Marín, RITMO, 5- star review for All-Night Vigil

“Director Steven Fox forges a distinctive sound in which quieter passages are quite delicate. These contrast sharply with the almost gravelly vocal textures usually heard in the work, but in climactic passages, he gives the group a fascinating kind of focused power that carries a good deal of ecstatic emotion." 
– ArkivMusic