Composer Adolphus Hailstork is a professor of music and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion in Norfolk, VA, but outside of his institutional affiliation he has readily won many admirers and honors for the qualities of his music. Hailstork is not easy to pin down stylistically; while his music draws extensively from perceptible traditions, including those relating to his own African-American heritage, he reserves for himself use of techniques commonly associated with advanced contemporary music. Albany Records' Amazing Grace: Organ Music of Adolphus Hailstork touches upon several of the areas in which Hailstork feels at home, the organ itself being one of them, as Hailstork regularly plays service music himself and has studied organ for over a span of five decades. Amazing Grace: Organ Music of Adolphus Hailstork features some selections from Hailstork's extensive catalog of original organ music as performed by an Old Dominion colleague,
James Kosnik, who also edits the organ anthology Laudate! for Concordia Press, which has published some of these works.
The Eastern Virginia Brass Quartet and tympanist Rob Cross join in on Hailstork's Fanfare on "Amazing Grace," which is an impressive, illuminating piece. One would have liked a tighter showing from the brass in this work, as the performance is a little loose in that department; however, it leads swiftly into the Spiritual Suite. This alternates bass-baritone Frank Ward singing five Gospel spirituals with Hailstork's settings of them, Ward's singing is right as rain, and Hailstork's settings are as different from one another as they are from the originals. Some, such as "Wade in the Water," push the envelope in regard to service music and organists will no doubt welcome them as an alternative to the usual fare available. Hailstork's Prelude on "Veni Emmanuel" is a very finely wrought piece, which shows some interest in French organ elaboration; its corresponding Toccata is likewise fine but marred by a bad edit midway through the recording.
The longest work, a 9/11-inspired piece entitled Armageddon for organ and percussion, is more challenging than the rest and only partly successful. The opening, with its loud clusters, scattershot percussion, and police whistles, is oddly like watching a silent movie of Armageddon with a theater organ accompaniment and effects, although it gets better as it goes along. The organ sounds terrific on this disc; for once, it is placed in a reasonably dry acoustic and has great presence, but Albany does not confide in us what kind of instrument is in use, or where this was recorded.