This release by the choir Conspirare earned a 2022 Grammy award nomination for Best Classical Choral Performance, and the choir, with its rounded American sound, is in fine form here under the direction of Craig Hella Johnson. He also contributes a small compositional epilogue, but there is more on display here besides fine choral singing. Except in Johnson's piece at the end, which is attractive but does not really sum up the music on the rest of the album, Conspirare is accompanied by either four (the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet) or 12 guitars (the massed forces of the Los Angeles group plus the Texas and Austin Guitar Quartets). A photo in the booklet shows the guitarists in front of the choir as if they were a little orchestra. This is an unusual combination, and the contemporary composers here -- Reena Esmail, Nico Muhly, and Kile Smith -- handle it with the excitement of having found something new. In Muhly's piece, with 12 guitarists available, they sometimes take on the effect of a harp; in Smith's work, they convey a sense of elemental rhythm. Smith's work is associated with the texts by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, one of the earliest Native American writers and activists supporting the rights of Native peoples. Muhly's texts, by contrast, come from the writings of pioneer women, while that of Esmail's work comes from a text by from the Persian mystic poet Hafiz ("When / The guitar / can forgive the past / It starts singing") that lends the album its title. The whole collection both reflects the choir's U.S. Southwest origins and deals in more universal themes, and it's quite unusual and rewarding. The guitars tend to lose definition in the Delos label's church sound, although the choir is clear enough.