Renaissance Men Awarded 2022 Boston Foundation LAB Grant for "Renmen" – New Haitian Music Program
11.01.2024
RENMENTALITY – THE ALBUM
Renaissance Men, New England's premiere male vocal chamber ensemble, returns with our newest album, RenMentality, which features a diverse array of music from composers with lived experience of mental illness throughout history: fresh interpretations of traditional choral works by Schumann, Beethoven, Monteverdi, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky, breathtaking renditions of rarely heard works by Charles Ives and Brian Wilson, and tape-cassette recorded covers of songs featured on Nirvana's iconic “MTV: Unplugged."
The album's centerpiece is the world-premiere recording of Jay Mobley's When I Look Back: Theme and Variations, a muti-movement, cross-genre work for eight individual male voices, using texts derived from live interviews in coordination with National Alliance on Mental Illness Massachusetts. RenMentality de-stigmatizes and humanizes the realities of mental health challenges and offers comfort to those whom relate, as well as entertains with ethereal, expressive vocal art. RenMentality has been performed live in concert series, college workshops, and in-patient mental health facilities across
New England. RenMentality was recorded March 31-April 4 2022 at Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and Ghost Hit Recording, West Springfield, Massachusetts.