Melissa Bybee, an alto with Voices of Ascension and member of the board of directors since January 2021, has been an active participant in New York City’s professional choral scene since she was a graduate student at The Manhattan School of Music. From 2011-2016, she was also a member of C4, the Choral Composer Conductor Collective, a unique chorus that performs choral music written in the past 25 years and serves as an ongoing workshop/recital chorus for the composers and conductors who form the core of the group. READ MORE

GABRIEL FAURÉ: REQUIEM - AGNUS DEI

It’s hard to think about the choral pieces that move me without thinking about the role music has played in my life. While neither of my parents are musicians, both are musical. My mom played french horn in the Leesville (Louisiana) High School marching band and could play a little piano, and one of my earliest memories of singing is of my dad bellowing “Camelot” in his best fake baritone, Richard Burton voice. From the moment I could scoot around and make noise, I loved music. By the time I was two, I was singing along with Maria and the children and nuns of “The Sound of Music.” I also became obsessed with the piano. Our next door neighbors had one, and their daughter, Tricia, could play. I wanted nothing more than to be able to play like Tricia. My mom promised she would let me take lessons as soon as a) we owned a piano and b) I could read, and she delivered: with first grade came the piano and weekly piano lessons. When I was 7, we moved from Leesville to Alexandria, Louisiana, where I joined the children’s choir at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church and met my musical soulmate and teacher/mentor, Phyllis Werlein Budd. Mrs. Budd could do anything! She could sing (Juilliard-trained mezzo), conduct a choir, and play the organ, all at the same time! After a few years in the children’s choir, Mrs. Budd let me sing soprano in her adult choir. I was in 8th or 9th grade when she decided she had the forces to perform the Fauré “Requiem,” and when I think of choral works that move me, the Fauré is at the top of my list. While the entire work is gorgeous, the “Agnus Dei” (Lamb of God) is my favorite movement. There is just so much to love about it: the introduction, so warm and expansive in F major, the tenors’ exquisite melody, the moment the sopranos enter alone on the word “Lux” (Light), and the rich harmonies of “Lux aeterna luceat eis” (Light eternal shine for them) that follow, the masterful and unexpected reprise of the opening of the entire work, “‘Requiem aeternam” (Eternal rest), and finally, the close, which ends as we began, only this time, in the bright and hopeful key of D. I hope you enjoy this wonderful performance by Voices.

– Melissa Bybee

GABRIEL FAURÉ Requiem - Agnus Dei

Voices of Ascension
Dennis Keene, Artistic Director
Mark Kruczek, Organist

Recorded live in performance on February 5, 2015
Church of the Ascension, New York City
The singers in this performance are represented by the American Guild of Musical Artists, AFL-CIO.