The Mirage Calls
Kansas City Chorale, Charles Bruffy
FOR YOUR
GRAMMY® CONSIDERATION
Best Choral Performance
Producer of the Year, Classical
Blanton Alspaugh
Best Engineered Album, Classical
Dirk Sobotka, Jacob Steingart
ABOUT
LISTEN
Follow Marco Polo’s epic journey with the Grammy-winning Kansas City Chorale conducted by Charles Bruffy on The Mirage Calls. This new recording features music from Rome to the Far East including Chen Yi’s Chinese Folk Songs, lavish choral tapestries of the Mongolian steppe, thunderous rhythms from the Middle East and India, and recently restored from the Vatican library, witness the first performance in nearly 500 years of Bartolome de Escobedo’s masterpiece, Missa ad te levavi.
About Kansas City Chorale:
The Kansas City Chorale, founded in 1982, is a professional vocal ensemble that enriches local, national, and international communities through its dedication to excellence in performing music from diverse historical periods.
Along with the Phoenix Chorale, the Kansas City Chorale is the first North American choir to record for Chandos Records, debuting on the label in 2006 with Eternal Rest. Their second album, Grechaninov’s Passion Week, was released in 2007 and received Grammy nominations in four categories: Best Classical Album, Best Choral Performance, Best Surround Sound Album, and won the 2008 Grammy award for Best Engineered Album, Classical. That same year, the choir’s third joint recording with the Phoenix Chorale, a collection of sacred choral works by Josef Rheinberger, earned Grammy nominations for Best Choral Performance and Best Surround Sound Album.
The Kansas City Chorale’s album, Life & Breath: Choral Works of René Clausen, released on June 1, 2012, won the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance. In February 2016, the Chorale’s recording Rachmaninoff: All-Night Vigil, made with the Phoenix Chorale, won the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance. Their 2020 release, Requiem for Fallen Brothers, on the Naxos label, received a Grammy nomination for Best Choral Performance.
Audiences around the globe have enjoyed the sounds of the Kansas City Chorale through recordings and radio broadcasts. In 2009 the Chorale performed in South Korea at the Incheon Choral Festival, and also that year, made its New York debut, with the Phoenix Chorale, in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. The New York Times referred to the choirs’ “refined sound and elegant phrasing” as well as its “vivid intensity,” and praised the performance for its “buoyant pulse and energetic finesse.”
