Vocal Ensemble New York Polyphony to Release New Album 'Sky Of My Heart'

On Friday, June 13, 2025, GRAMMY Award-nominated vocal ensemble New York Polyphony will relesae its tenth commercial album, Sky of my Heart, on BIS Records. Now approaching its 20th anniversary season in 2025-2026, the ensemble revisits key works from its history in this album, incorporating New York Polyphony commissions and collaborations along with revered works from the Early Music repertoire.

Featuring guest performances by LeStrange Viols, the expansive recording encompasses selections from Renaissance composers William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons through 20th and 21st century works by Ivan Moody, John Tavener, Becky McGlade, Akemi Naito, Paul Moravec, Andrew Smith, and Nico Muhly. Two pre-release singles will be available: the first movement, Ego dilecto meo, from Ivan Moody's Canticum Canticorum I on May 16, 2025, and William Byrd's Agnus Dei on May 30, 2025.

Sky of my Heart takes its evocative title from the text of a poem by the influential Buddhist priest-poet Saigyō (1118-90), which is set to music by Naito on this album. The recording opens with Byrd's triumphant Ecce quam bonum (1591), selected in honor of the 400th anniversary of the composer's death. Drawn from Byrd's first book of Gradualia (1605), a volume of liturgical music intended for clandestine use by persecuted English Catholics, the work represents a universal call for "brethren to dwell in unity" - a message for troubled times that transcends both sacred intent and the era in which it was written.

For the album's second track, New York Polyphony performs Canticum Canticorum I (1985) by the late Father Ivan Moody, a priest, theologian, and composer who was a frequent collaborator with the ensemble before his passing in 2024. Originally composed for the esteemed English vocal quartet the Hilliard Ensemble, the three-movement work represents a musical triptych of texts from the biblical Song of Songs, expressed with both passion and timeless simplicity. Fittingly, Moody's work is followed by a piece by his mentor, Sir John Tavener. Tavener's The Lamb (1982), one of his most beloved works, offers a setting of William Blake's poem of the same name, from Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

In Becky McGlade's Of the Father's Love Begotten (2021), a New York Polyphony commission, the composer offers a setting of four verses from the well-known text based on a 19th-century translation of Corde natus ex parentis by the Latin poet Prudentius. Following that is Akemi Naito's Tsuki no Waka (2019), composed for New York Polyphony as a setting of the classical Japanese poetry (waka) by Saigyō.

Paul Moravec's The Last Invocation (2020) and Darest Thou Now, O Soul (2023) are two settings from Walt Whitman's collection of five poems Whispers of Heavenly Death, composed by Moravec during the pandemic lockdowns and gifted to New York Polyphony. Following these is the "Agnus Dei" movement from William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices, featuring LeStrange Viols alongside New York Polyphony in a piece that dovetails smoothly with the sense of peaceful departure captured in Whitman's verses.

Andrew Smith's Katarsis (2020), composed as a setting for the biblical Lamentations of Jeremiah and dedicated to the composer's father, has become a mainstay in live performances by New York Polyphony. It is followed by Nico Muhly's My Days (2012), a ritualized memory piece about Orlando Gibbons, combining text from Psalm 39 (which Gibbons himself set) with a written account of Gibbons' own autopsy - a poignant 17th-century semi-anonymous text. LeStrange Viols is featured on this piece as well as the album's next and final track: Orlando Gibbons' The Silver Swan (1612), a setting of a poem Gibbons may have written himself, which brings the recording to a quiet, poignant close.

About New York Polyphony

Critically acclaimed for a "rich, natural sound that's larger and more complex than the sum of its parts," (NPR) and as "singers of superb musicianship and vocal allure" (The New Yorker), New York Polyphony is one of the foremost vocal chamber ensembles active today. Their innovative programming spans Gregorian chant to contemporary commissions, and their focus on familiar and rare works of the 12-17th centuries has helped bring early music to modern audiences.

Founded in 2006, the quartet's growing discography includes two GRAMMY-nominated albums, and many of their releases have topped the "best of" lists of The New Yorker, Gramophone, and The New York Times. Their release And the sun darkened (2021, BIS) received accolades from publications worldwide: BBC Music Magazine hailed it as "imaginatively programmed" and "immaculately sung," Early Music America called the disc "radiant," and Klassik Heute applauded the album's "flawlessly pure sound that amazes the listener." Lamentationes (2019, BIS) was a finalist in the 2020 Gramophone Awards and praised by Classics Today as "perfect ensemble singing, ideally recorded." It features Francisco de Peñalosa's Lamentationes Jeremiae Feria V, which was used as part of Aleph Earth, a groundbreaking audiovisual piece developed in collaboration with the University of Oregon's Artificial Intelligence Creative Practice Research Group.

Missa Charles Darwin (2017, Navona Records) features American composer Gregory W. Brown's innovative setting of the writings of Charles Darwin; New York Polyphony has twice performed the work at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin underneath the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. Roma Æterna (2016, BIS) debuted at #4 on the Billboard Classical chart and was hailed as "resplendent and elegant" by the San Francisco Chronicle. 2014's Sing thee Nowell (BIS) earned the group a second GRAMMY nomination in the Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance category, having earned their first GRAMMY nomination in 2013 for Times go by Turns (BIS) in the same category.

New York Polyphony tours extensively, performing in some of the world's finest concert halls and participating in major festivals at home and abroad. Engagements have included Wigmore and Cadogan Halls (London), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Stavanger Kammermusikkfestival (Norway) in 2018 and 2023, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston) in 2017 and 2022, Taipei International Choral Festival, Heidelberger Frühling (Germany), Tage Alter Musik Regensburg (Germany), Festival Internacional de Música Abvlensis (Spain), Cartagena Festival International de Música (Colombia), and Early Music Vancouver. They presented Jonathan Berger's opera Visitations at Bing Concert Hall as part of their 2013 residency at Stanford University. As of 2023, the quartet has performed in all but eight US states. Learn more at newyorkpolyphony.com.