“Rose Ever Blooming honours the role of Mary in the story of Jesus, highlighting the importance of family and the eternally strong bonds between mother and son. Inspired by poetry by Patricia Monaghan, we have constructed a libretto featuring twelve of these poems. Traditional Christmas carols are woven together with this poetry, acting as musical touchstones while also supporting the themes and narratives in Monaghan's poetry.

“Each divine moment of the Christmas story is presented here with a human counterpart. These poems portray Mary in all her humanity and as a reluctant hero of the Christmas story. In Rose Ever Blooming, Mary's story is presented as a reflection from the end of her life, beginning with the Annunciation and ending with her own list of Beatitudes, praising the ordinary and the everyday blessings we take for granted. We see the onset of motherhood as a metamorphosis from ordinary girl to one who will 'bring forth the future.' A new Magnificat, not praising an entity outside ourselves, recognizes the divine within all of us. It was refreshing to tell Mary's story through her eyes, and Monaghan's brilliant portrayal of her character shines through in these sensitive and poignant poems.”
– Jocelyn Hagen and Timothy C. Takach

Jocelyn Hagen composes music that has been described as “simply magical” (Fanfare Magazine) and “dramatic and deeply moving” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul). She is a pioneer in the field of composition, pushing the expectations of musicians and audiences with large-scale multimedia works, electro-acoustic music, dance, and opera. Her first forays into composition were via songwriting, still very evident in her work. The majority of her compositions are for the voice: solo, chamber and choral. Her melodic music is rhythmically driven and texturally complex, rich in colour and deeply heartfelt. In 2023 her opera The Song Poet, written with Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang, premiered with Minnesota Opera, and sold out their run over six months prior to the premiere date. In 2019 she celebrated the premiere of her multimedia symphony The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, which includes video projections created by a team of visual artists, highlighting da Vinci’s spectacular drawings, inventions, and texts. The work has already been performed over fifty times across the United States, including Canada, Sweden, Croatia, and England. Hagen describes her process of composing for choir, orchestra and film simultaneously in a Tedx Talk given at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, now available on YouTube. Hagen’s commissions include Voces8, Conspirare, the Minnesota Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, the International Federation of Choral Music, True Concord Voices and Orchestra, the American Choral Directors Associations of Minnesota, Georgia, Connecticut and Texas, the North Dakota Music Teachers Association, Cantus, the Boston Brass, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the St. Olaf Band, among many others. Her work is independently published through JH Music, as well as through Graphite Publishing, G. Schirmer, EC Schirmer, Fred Bock Music Publishing, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and Boosey and Hawkes. 

Inspired by captivating narrative, speculative fiction and making humans better through art, the music of Timothy C. Takach is a mainstay in the concert world. Applauded for his melodic lines, thoughtful text choices and rich, intriguing harmonies, Takach has received commissions and performances from Grammy Award-winning ensembles Roomful of Teeth and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the St. Olaf Band, Lorelei Ensemble, True Concord Voices and Orchestra, and numerous other organisations. His compositions have been performed on A Prairie Home Companion, The Boston Pops holiday tour and at venues such as the Library of Congress, Kennedy Center and Royal Opera House Muscat. Takach is a co-creator of the theatrical production of All is Calm: the Christmas Truce of 1914, by Peter Rothstein, and won the 2024 Domenic J. Pellicciotti Opera Composition Prize for Computing Venus with librettist Caitlin Vincent. Takach’s a cappella choral symphony Helios is “larger than life, as if the piece were accompanied by an orchestra” and is “complemented with brilliant visuals created by CandyStations” (Tucson.com). In 2023 the James Sewell Ballet premiered his ballet Unfashioned Creature in St. Paul, MN. Takach was a co-founder, singer and Artistic Co-Director of the vocal ensemble Cantus and has frequent national work as a composer-in-residence, clinician and lecturer. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two sons.

The VOCES8 Foundation Choir, “warm and as ever pitch-perfect” (5* BBC Music Magazine) is a group of professional chamber singers with a silky yet punchy sound, sublime blend and the precision and agility of its namesake, VOCES8. Its members are connected to the Foundation through VOCES8, Apollo5, Lyyra, its Scholars or LIVE From London online concert series, and regularly sing together in either chamber or consort form.
 
Under Artistic Director and conductor Barnaby Smith’s guidance, the ensemble has performed both a cappella and orchestral repertoire by Bach, Byrd, Handel, Weelkes, Haydn, Mozart, Harris, Walton and Vaughan Williams, and recorded and filmed new commission premieres by Mårten Jansson, Christopher Tin, Paul Smith and Taylor Scott Davis. It has worked with the Philharmonia, the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Foundation’s own VOCES8 Foundation Orchestra, and it has collaborated with conductor Nicholas Kraemer and soloists such as Jack Liebeck, Anna Dennis, Carolyn Sampson and Iestyn Davis. 
 
The Foundation Choir has premiered new choral/orchestral arrangements online for LIVE From London, and its first album release on VOCES8 Records was Jansson’s Requiem Novum with the Philharmonia. Decca’s 2023 Christmas album, “A Choral Christmas”, featured the choir singing “sparkling, roof-raising arrangements of the classics that really impress” (5* BBC Music Magazine) and the world-premiere recording of Taylor Scott Davis’s Magnificat, both of which were first premiered in LIVE From London.

The VOCES8 Foundation Orchestra is made up of London’s finest orchestral players and a staggering line-up of chamber musicians and soloists who gather to support the charitable and educational ethos of the Foundation.
 
Most recently led by soloist Jack Liebeck, you can often find Gareth McLearnon, Julian Bliss, and members of the Carducci Quartet in the cheerful team. Under Barnaby Smith’s direction, the orchestra’s sound is both mesmerically precise and lushly expansive. The VOCES8 Foundation Orchestra also appeared in Decca’s 2023 Christmas album “A Choral Christmas”; “Rose Ever Blooming” is its third album release.

Track listing:
1. Lo, How a Rose (feat. Jack Liebeck)
2. The Beginning of the Story
3. Annunciation: With a Sound Like Wings (feat. Jack Liebeck)
4. Gabriel's Message (Album Version) (feat. Jack Liebeck)
5. And Then It Was Over (feat. Jack Liebeck)
6. Miracles
7. A Stranger Tells Us the News (feat. Jack Liebeck)
8. Life After Angels
9. Resurrection (feat. Jack Liebeck & Katie Jeffries-Harris)
10. Magnificat (feat. Jack Liebeck)
11. Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming (feat. Jack Liebeck)
12. I Said Yes to Hope (feat. Jack Liebeck & Katie Jeffries-Harris
13. Beatitudes
14. Woman Clothed With the Sun (feat. Jack Liebeck)