We all know that sorting through the stacks of new choral music released each year can be a daunting and time-consuming task. While I often feature “tried-and-true” works in this column with a handful of standout pieces that fit a particular issue’s topic, for this issue I decided to focus entirely on recent releases. My goal was to find newer works for advanced mixed high school ensembles that are fresh, high quality, and appealing. If you conduct an advanced SATB choir that thrives on a good challenge, I hope you find something here that you can use. However, I have also included a few works that are of more modest difficulty for those who are still building their program or who need music for an anticipated “building year.” Most of the works have recordings and perusal materials available online, so I encourage you to further investigate any works of interest to you via the publishers’ Web sites.
