SIX
 

The King's Singers

—  CD SINGLE  —

Programme

The King’s Singers show no sign of slowing down. After many years at the top their creativity and number of appearances throughout the world remains undimmed. In what has sometimes been described as the third generation, this album contains six titles spanning the life of the group so far.

After the explosive rock decade of the 1960s in which the group was founded, you can almost hear the hair lengthen in Neil Young’s 1970s song After the Goldrush Arranged by Peter Knight, it was originally sung by the group with Nana Mouskouri on her TV show for BBC television, and has remained popular ever since. Irving Berlin’s much-loved jazz classic Blue Skies is here sung in a cool and reflective arrangement by Richard Rodney Bennett, who provided the Singers with many additions to their jazz library. The Beatles’ Blackbird is one of the most requested encores happily sung to ecstatic audiences. Daryl Runswick’s arrangement perfectly maintains the feel of the original song.

The remaining three tracks are all newly recorded pieces, and all 21st century products. Down to the River to Pray, a song of faith, or spiritual, appeared in the Coen brothers movie ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ King’s Singer Philip Lawson arranged it, as he did Lullabye (Goodnight my Angel), which shows Billy Joel at his lyric best. The Wishing Tree, by former Divine Comedy member, Joby Talbot, was commissioned by the King’s Singers and the BBC for the 2002 Proms, celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee. Seven new works reflecting life in her reign were set alongside 16th century madrigals written to celebrate the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth. Talbot writes: ‘The feeling I would most readily associate with the Elizabethan madrigalists is a sense of perpetual yearning. Kathleen Jamie’s poem expresses just such a sense of longing but bypasses the Arcadian idyll to link people’s expectations and desires more directly to the natural world. My music is accordingly punchy and angular - a sense of desperation creeping in as words and syllables are bounced from one side of the ensemble to the other.’

Texts

[1] Down to the River to Pray

As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
O sisters let’s go down
Let’s go down, Come on down
O sisters let’s go down
Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the robe and crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
O brothers let’s go down
Let’s go down, Come on down
Come on brothers let’s go down
Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
O fathers let’s go down
Let’s go down, Come on down
O fathers let’s go down
Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the robe and crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
O Mothers let’s go down
Come on down, don’t you wanna go down?
O Mothers let’s go down
Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way!
O sinners let’s go down
Let’s go down, come on down
O sinners let’s go down
Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the robe and crown?
Good Lord show me the way!

[2] Blackbird

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

[3] The Wishing Tree (words by Kathleen Jamie)

I stand neither in the wilderness
nor fairyland,

but in the fold
of a green hill,

the tilt from one parish
into another.

To look at me
through a smirr of rain

is to taste the iron
in your own blood;

because I bear
the common currency

of longing: each wish
each secret visitation.

My limbs lift, scabbed
with greenish coins; I draw

into my slow wood, fleur
-de-lys, the enthroned Britannia.

Beyond, the land reaches
toward the Atlantic.

And though I’m poisoned,
choking on the small change

of human hope, gently
beaten into me, look:

I am still alive:
in fact, in bud.

[4] Lullabye (Goodnight my Angel)

Goodnight my angel time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you’ve been asking me
I think you know what I’ve been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
And you should always know
Wherever you may go
No matter where you are
I never will be far away

Goodnight my angel now it’s time to sleep
And still so many things I want to say
Remember all the songs you sang for me
When we went sailing on an emerald bay
And like a boat out on the ocean
I’m rocking you to sleep
The water’s dark and deep
Inside this ancient heart
You’ll always be a part of me

Goodnight my angel now it’s time to dream
And dream how wonderful your life will be
Someday your child may cry
And if you sing this lullabye
Then in your heart
There will always be a part of me
Someday we’ll all be gone
But lullabyes go on and on
They never die
That’s how you and I will be

[5] Blue Skies

Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see

Bluebirds
Singing a song
Nothing but bluebirds
All day long

Never saw the sun shining so bright
Never saw things going so right
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Blue days
Blue days
Nothing but blue skies

[6] After the Goldrush

Well I dreamed I saw the knights in armor coming
Saying something about a queen
There were peasants singing and drummers drumming
And the archer split the tree.
There was a fanfare blowing to the sun
That was floating on the breeze
Look at mother nature on the run in the nineteen seventies.

I was lying in a burned out basement
With a full moon in my eyes
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst through the skies.
There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like getting high
Thinking about what a friend had said,
I was hoping it was a lie.

Well I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships flying
Through the yellow haze of the sun
There were children crying and banners flying
All around the chosen ones.
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun
Flying mother nature’s silver seed
To a new home in the sun.