Transept: All Is Miracle: The Choral Music of Kyle Pederson
Navona Records
As it builds its discography, a vocal ensemble will occasionally deviate from releases featuring works by multiple composers to ones presenting material by single figures. Skylark, for example, recently did so on shades of blue in featuring the choral music of Mark Van Overmeire, as did VOCES8 with its recordings of material by Eric Whitacre (Home) and Christopher Tin (The Lost Birds). Operating out of the Sioux Falls area, Transept does the same on All is Miracle, a superb collaboration between the award-winning vocal outfit and the Minneapolis-based Kyle Pederson. While Transept's repertoire extends from contemporary choral pieces to plainchant and Renaissance masterworks, the album in no way suffers in limiting its focus to one composer.
Guided by its founder and Artistic Director Timothy J. Campbell, Transept's lustrous sound is enhanced by instrumentalists who add piano, clarinet, cello, organ, violin, flute, and electric guitar to about half of the seventeen pieces. The presentation also changes when some feature the full ensemble—nine sopranos, eight altos, eight tenors, and thirteen basses are listed—and others an eleven-member sub-group dubbed Transept Consort. The arrangements of some pieces even include both groupings, with the music fluidly segueing between the larger and smaller units. In keeping with the words by Albert Einstein (even if their attribution is debated) that give the release its title (“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle”), the tone of the album is celebratory and uplifting and the world seen as a source of wonder and magnificence.
How the project came together is a classic case of serendipity. A Sioux Falls native, Campbell grew up on the same street as Pederson's brother-in-law and also knew the composer's sister, and when she mentioned to Campbell that her brother was a choral composer from Sioux Falls, he perked up immediately. The creative convergence between Pederson and Transept seems in hindsight to have been pre-destined, and the parallel ascent in their development also makes All Is Miracle feel like an inevitable step in their respective journeys.
Recorded in May 2024 at the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Sioux Falls, the album comprises four world premieres, frequently performed pieces, and re-imaginings of iconic hymns, all of it delivered with the utmost engagement. Introducing the release, the haunting title work establishes the musical and thematic tone when the text by Charles Anthony Silvestri emphasizes that it's not only the rare epic elements of experience that are miraculous but also the mundane moments that make up the greater part of our everyday lives (“the sound of a newborn crying, … the joy of a family in gathering”). With pianist Paul Sanchez supporting the consort, soprano Savannah Porter and mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski intone gloriously above the smaller unit. Magnificent moments are abundant, but there's no denying a particularly memorable one occurs at the end of the joyous affirmation Awake, Arise! when the voices collectively gather in a thunderous chord. In this reimagining of a hymn written almost 500 years ago, the text was newly adapted for a contemporary audience by Pederson and musically updated too.
In keeping with its Biblical story, In the Beginning blossoms gradually, with Paul Schimming's unaccompanied clarinet eventually joined by Transept's vocal textures. After the beauty of the consort's delivery is showcased in the harmonically towering Stars, settings such as Sanctus, Last Words, and Can We Sing the Darkness to Light? seduce with haunting tapestries of solo voices, vocal sub-groups, and instruments. The tender latter, buoyed by Sánchez's piano, Robert Erhardt's cello, and Doosook Kim's violin and its visualization of a world free of violence and elevated by compassion, is particularly moving. The flute and organ of, respectively, William Cedeño Torres and Jared Ostermann blend beautifully with Transept Consort in the Horatius Bonar-penned hymn I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.
The hymn A Mighty Fortress is Our God, in which Martin Luther's words are newly adapted by Pederson, is strikingly reimagined, while the familiar spiritual Were You There arrests in a bold new arrangement. Elsewhere, there's gospel (My King Is Comin' Soon), inspirational uplift (Bend), and the set-ending God Be With You Til We Meet Again, a stirring adaptation by Pederson of the traditional Irish blessing (“May the road rise to meet you; may the wind be at your back…”). His music has been called “incredibly inspirational, moving, and spiritual” (American Prize), and one need look no further than this collection for proof. Transept amplifies all such facets of his music with this uplifting vocal ensemble expression. The group prides itself on filling “spaces with the sounds of transcendence,” and that's certainly what happens here.August 2025