A few months ago, we told you about a commissioned piece we were working on for the OCEAN Orchestra called The Turning Year (you can read our original post about it here), and we are excited to share the finished version with you now, just in time for New Year’s! In this track, you’ll hear Windborne joined by the three members of OCEAN, Steve Winick, Lisa Moscatiello, and Jennifer Cutting.
Working on this piece was a fun new experience for us! OCEAN was clear that they wanted us to make this arrangement our own, so we should run with whatever ideas and harmonies inspired us. However, we all agreed that there should be some moments where OCEAN could be featured, so our challenge was to write a piece that moved in and out of the full seven voices of Windborne and OCEAN combined, with highlight moments of solos and duets for singers we had never worked with. We are really pleased with the result, and you’ll hear some new voices shining through in this final mix. It was fun for us to be able to write chords for more than just four voices when the mood called for it!
The audio track is linked above, and OCEAN made a lyrics video that you can watch here. If you are interested in the rest of their album (which includes the original Turning Year track with voice and piano), you can find it here.
Here’s what OCEAN writes about The Turning Year in their online liner notes:
We recorded two versions of this song, as bookends to open and close this EP. It is a song that acknowledges the pain and loss of living through two years of a horrific global pandemic, but expresses hope for a better year to come. It reflects the bittersweet stock-taking we do at the threshold of a new year while it celebrates friends both present and departed, and invites us to raise our voices together in a toast to the coming year. For this unaccompanied version, we invited the talented New England vocal quartet Windborne to arrange it and perform it with us—although, through the miracle of modern recording technology, we were able to remain socially distanced by about 400 miles.
We wish you the best as 2021 winds down and the year turns over into 2022!
In harmony and gratitude,
Lauren, Lynn, Will, and Jeremy
