by Jeffrey Baxter
Published August 29, 2025
The Mirage Calls, Kansas City Chorale, conducted by Charles Bruffy. Bright Shiny Things BSHC-0218
For this collection of musical treasures from the Sistine Chapel and the Silk Road, Kansas City Chorale conductor Charles Bruffy describes The Mirage Calls as “an eclectic mix of choral works that will capture and celebrate Marco Polo’s incredible [24-year] journey… from Rome to the Far East” and back. The compilation features Asian folk songs and melodies arranged for chorus by contemporary composers, including music from India, China, and Inner Mongolia. They provide a fascinating frame for the disc’s centerpiece, the Missa ad te levavi by Spanish Renaissance composer Bartolomé de Escobedo — newly reconstructed from the Vatican archives for this world premiere recording.
The album’s journey begins with the attention-grabbing “Zikr,” an Islamic chant sung in Urdu and Arabic (arranged for male voices by Ethan Sperry). “Zikr,” referring to a Sufi form of worship, is an ecstatic, high energy utterance — a hymn of praise that announces itself with a blend of non-western intonation of voices. The singers are asked to bend the pitch and slide in and out of notes for emphasis, often singing in octaves and punctuated by a driving percussion. The composer, A.R. Rahman, perhaps best known to audiences for his Academy Award winning score for the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire, wrote “Zikr” for the 2004 bio-pic Bose: The Forgotten Hero, about Indian Independence leader Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
Two Mongolian compositions follow. The folksong “Dörven Dalai” (The Four Seas), arranged for chorus in 1995 by composer Yongrub (b. 1934), recalls in its jaunty setting a choral style not dissimilar to the Trois chansons of Ravel. It is a lively call to eat, drink, and be merry.
In stark contrast is “Zeregleent Gobi” (Mirage on the Gobi Desert), composed in 1992 by Se Enkhbayar (b. 1956). With the poem’s first line, “The mirage calls to me across thousands of miles,” this languorous a cappella choral piece unfolds in a seemingly timeless scale, with layers of overlapping voices that effectively evoke the vastness of the desert. The KC Chorale’s artistry is on full display here, with an elegant control of breathlessly sustained musical lines and emotional intent.
The Escobedo mass is presented in a new edition, reconstructed for the KC Chorale in 2019 by musicologist Patrick Dittamo. The original manuscript, not forgotten but stored in the Vatican archives for the last 500 years, had been ravaged by time. Dittamo recalls that “the Vatican manuscript…suffers from severe ink corrosion. The music was copied on paper instead of more durable parchment, and over the years the acidic iron gall ink has bled into the paper, and in some areas eaten through the page entirely. Fortunately, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana digitized it and made it available online, so we have a record of what it once looked like, even if it continues to degrade.”
Dittamo was able to sharpen the digitized version, using basic image software to bring out details that might otherwise have been missed: “Fortunately, the scribe who copied the manuscript around 1540-1541, Johannes Parvus, had a very regular hand,” Dittamo notes. “For example, his note stems are almost perfectly uniform in length, so if you can see the end of a stem, you can determine the pitch of the note, even if the notation is now a blotch there.”
Escobedo (1515-1563) was born in Zamora, Spain, and studied in Salamanca. In 1536, he moved to Rome to sing with the papal choir, along with Cristóbal de Morales (the only other Spaniard admitted). Of his surviving music there are just six motets, one villancico, and two mass settings — one of which is this Missa.
Dittamo writes: “This Missa ad te levavi is a paraphrase mass on the Gregorian chant Tract for the Third Sunday of Lent. Escobedo treats the chant freely, using its incipit as a scaffold for his main subject. Each main section of the mass (except for the Credo) opens with his chant paraphrase. Throughout the mass, Escobedo uses about 42 discernable motives as subjects, and some crop up a few times, but only six recur in every section of the Mass Ordinary. Of these only three appear to have basis in the plainchant.”
For this performance, Bruffy utilizes a common Renaissance practice of alternating voices between movements — not only to avoid vocal fatigue, but also to provide textural variety for the listener. He employs the full 24-voice Chorale for the opening plaintive five-voice Kyrie and sumptuous six-voice Sanctus/Osanna and utilizes a semi-chorus for the more intimate settings of Christe eleison and Crucifixus. A lone soprano-voice further varies the texture, intoning the Agnus Dei II as a plainchant (provided as a suggestion by the editor).
While Escobedo may not have been a prolific contrapuntal giant like Palestrina, his contributions — this Mass in particular — deserve a listen. The KC Chorale’s purity of tone and Bruffy’s well-ordered pacing make this a worthy addition to the catalogue of fine recordings of music from this Golden Age of choral polyphony.
Three contemporary arrangements of Chinese folk songs round out the recording’s journey. Created by composer Chen Yi, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Conservatory of Music and Dance, these songs represent three Chinese regions and dialects. Chen worked directly with Bruffy and the Chorale on matters of pronunciation, and the recording bears this out in their careful and convincing delivery.
“Mo Li Hua,” from the Jiangsu region, is a popular song about the jasmine flower. The melody was used by Puccini his opera Turandot and became associated with the 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests. Chen artfully plays with high versus low voices, moving together in octaves and parallel fourths for the final stanza.
“Diu Diu Deng,” from Taiwan, is an exquisite miniature in Chen’s hands that imitates the chug-chug of a steam engine as it travels through a tunnel “where water drips down” (Diu, Diu!). A final tone-cluster in the soprano-voices whistles the train’s exit from the tunnel. “The Flowing Stream,” from the Yunnan province,is crafted with the most loving elegance and sensitivity to text. Its mournful longing is evoked in a treble-dominated tune, supported by mostly hummed harmonies.
Chen’s sheer variety of textures and styles between these three settings make me want to hear more. She certainly seems an inspired conservator of Chinese folk art through group singing, just as the great Alice Parker was to American song in the previous century.
While text-translations are included, unfortunately a more detailed set of liner notes was not. However, this recording’s imaginative collection of East-Meets-West (as well as Past and Present) presents a brilliantly conceived and superbly executed addition to this ensemble’s rich recorded legacy.
Jeffrey Baxter is a retired choral administrator of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, where he managed and sang in its all-volunteer chorus and was an assistant to Robert Shaw. He holds a doctorate in choral music from The College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati and has written for BACH – The Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, The Choral Journal, and ArtsATL. For Early Music America, he recently reviewed a chorally magnificent B-minor Mass.
