Villa-Lobos's Musica Sacra

Jill Burleson's overview of Villa's sacred music is the feature piece in the latest issue of Choral Journal, the official publication of the American Choral Directors Association, which is available on their website in PDF format. I was especially impressed with Burleson's discussion of the Musica Sacra collection published by Vincente Vitale in 1951/52. It's no coincidence, since her 2007 Doctoral thesis was "Selected choral works from 'Musica Sacra' by Heitor Villa-Lobos: A performance edition critical notes and commentary." It's encouraging to see this increased interest in Villa's sacred music. I hope it results in more performances and recordings in the future.

PostScript: Here's a coincidence. Right after I posted this, I came across this tweet @onradio3now from BBC Radio3 with the playlist for tonight's Through the Night program. It includes this performance from Danish Radio:

4.00am
Villa-Lobos, Heitor (1887-1959): Kyrie and Gloria (Missa Sao Sebastiao)
Danish National Girls Choir
Michael Bojesen (conductor)

You can listen to this program (June 17/09) on BBC's iPlayer for the next 7 days. Thanks again, Twitter.