40 years, now that’s something worth celebrating! For this symbolic birthday marking midlife, Lionel Meunier pulls out all the stops. With his ensemble especially expanded for the occasion, he surrounds John Sheppard’s expressive masterpiece Media vita with two Renaissance polyphonic works for 40 voices. Every choir has dreamed of one day singing Thomas Tallis’s colossal Spem in alium. This work for 40 singers was probably inspired by Ecce beatam lucem by his Italian contemporary Alessandro Striggio. Vox Luminis dive with passion into these cyclical works, where music appears to “turn upon itself”, as melodies are born, expand and then disappear – a sublime interpretation of the inescapable circle of life.
