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Artist: Christopher Tin
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Christopher Tin:

The Lost Birds

The sky was once full of birds. Magnificent flocks so enormous that they would darken the skies for days as they flew overhead. The most awe-inspiring of these flocks belonged to a bird called the passenger pigeon. At their height, they were the most numerous bird species in North America, with a population estimated at 5 billion. But over the course of a few decades, we eradicated them for food, using nothing but the crudest 19th-century hunting technology. With callous indifference, we simply shot them out of the sky, one by one, until their songs were never heard again. 

The Lost Birds is a memorial for their loss, and the loss of other species due to human activity. It's a celebration of their beauty--as symbols of hope, peace, and renewal. But it also mourns their absence--through the lonely branches of a tree, or the fading echoes of distant bird cries. And like the metaphor of the canary in the coal mine, it's also a warning: that unless we reverse our course, the fate that befell these once soaring flocks will be a foreshadowing of our own extinction.

To pay proper tribute to these birds, I adopted a distinctly 19th-century musical vocabulary: one based on the tunefulness of folk songs, with a string orchestra accompaniment that's both soaring and melancholy. And to put their story into words, I turned to four 19th-century poets--Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Sara Teasdale. These women saw their world transform from a pastoral society to an industrial one--one in which humans, for the first time, began disastrously reshaping the environment. And the poems which I selected depict an increasingly fraught world: first without birds, and ultimately without humans.

We are now in the 21st century, and our tools for affecting the world around us--emissions, pesticides, deforestation--are more indiscriminate and cruelly efficient. As bird, fish, animal, and insect populations crash around us, we increasingly find ourselves in a silent world--one in which the songs of birds are heard less and less. We hope that the silence can be filled by more voices speaking up on behalf of these lost birds--for their sake, and for ours.

Christopher Tin:

To Shiver The Sky

TWO-TIME GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING COMPOSER CHRISTOPHER TIN SIGNS TO DECCA GOLD ANNOUNCES MAJOR LABEL DEBUT ALBUM  - TO SHIVER THE SKY

Recognized as the first artist to win a Grammy Award for music written for a video game, composer Christopher Tin will release a new album titled To Shiver the Sky on August 21. This album will mark Tin's major label debut after signing to Decca Gold. 

The first single Sogno di Volare ("The Dream of Flight") is a new recording of Tin's beloved theme to the popular game Civilization VI, a choral setting of Leonardo da Vinci's writings on flight. "The inspirational main theme serves as a recurring motif throughout the album, periodically returning after moments of darkness and despair," recalls Tin. 

To Shiver the Sky, is "an oratorio about the history of flight, and mankind's quest to conquer the heavens," explains Tin. The ambitious 11-track album will also mirror that story with the parallel evolution of Western classical music. Tin ultimately settled on eleven historical figures which are "our greatest astronomers, inventors, visionaries and pilots," he details. Each of whom serve as the basis for a composition, adding up to a kaleidoscopic epic that crosses centuries, continents, and perspectives. 

Christopher Tin:

Calling All Dawns

Award-winning composer Christopher Tin's debut album Calling All Dawns brings together some of the finest performers from around the world in a musical journey through the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Over 200 musicians contribute, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 4 choirs, a Maori mens chorus, as well as an international cast of featured soloists. The Soweto Gospel Choir performs a rendition of Tin's masterwork 'Baba Yetu', a song widely known as the theme to the video game Civilization IV. Mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade sings the lovely Polish 'Hymn Do Trojcy Swietej', medieval superstars Anonymous 4 perform the Irish 'Caoineadh', and Portuguese fado sensation Dulce Pontes performs 'Se E Pra Vir Que Venha.' Iranian vocalist Sussan Deyhim is featured on the lively 'Hamsafar', and Japanese pop star Lia, sharing the spotlight with Aoi Tada and Kaori Omura sings about the passing of the seasons in 'Mado Kara Mieru.'

15 New ON this week  121 Total
Synd: NPR/Hearts Of Space
Direct: SiriusXM/Boundaries, Music Choice/Classical Crossover, Undercurrents, ALLTVMusic
Markets include: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Kansas City, Denver, Detroit, Portland, New Orleans, Austin, Albuquerque, Orlando, Memphis, Chattanooga, Berkeley CA, El Paso, Canada
Online: RadioIO, BBS, Guru, Laswell, WGOE, GreenArrow, Humboldt 101, Dr. Music

Christopher Tin:

The Drop That Contained The Sea

The second album from two-time GrammyTM Award-winning composer Christopher Tin, entitled The Drop that Contained the Sea, has entered the Billboard Classical Traditional Charts at #1 after its first week of release. The ten-part song-cycle explores the theme of water in its different forms, with vocal performances by fellow GrammyTM Award-winners the Soweto Gospel Choir and Le Mystre des Voix Bulgares, as well as early music superstars Anonymous 4, Mongolian pop starNominjin, world-renowned fadista Dulce Pontes, GrammyTM-nominated choir Schola Cantorum and more.

11 NEW  101 TOTAL
SYND: PRI/The World
Direct: SiriusXM, Stingray, MOOD
Markets include: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver, Houston, Portland, Houston, Kansas City, Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Berkeley CA, Albuquerque, San Antonio, Montreal, Toronto
Online: Taintradio, Venturebeat, Live 365, Dirty Dog