October Project announces the 10^th Anniversary re-issue of the original studio recording of their trailblazing choral work The Book of Rounds: A Cappella, available October 31^st.
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A precursor to the Book of Rounds: Choral Edition (2021) and the Anthem & Telly Award-winning Virtual Choir of Joy (2020), this recording of twenty-one ‘modern mantras’ offers an intimate, rapturous experience of a piece that continues to expand its reach and influence to choirs and audiences alike. A post of the song “Turn” from the album performed by the Vancouver Youth Choir, the largest youth choir in Canada, traveled out recently to the one million followers of Daily Choirs online, resulting in an outpouring of interest from choirs across the globe.
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In the ten years since its initial release, The Book of Rounds: 21 Songs of Grace has achieved significant acclaim and been sung by thousands of singers. First released as a fundraiser for a friend whose son was a victim at Sandy Hook, word of mouth about the music and its message caught the attention of Tami Simon, founder of Sounds True, the world’s leading publisher of transformational teachings, Hal Leonard, the world’s largest sheet music publisher, and Elizabeth Lesser, founder of the Omega Institute, and many others.

The songs have moved beyond classrooms and concert halls to spiritual and healing communities including music therapy, hospice (The Threshold Choir), Alzheimer and dementia patients (Canada’s nationwide Voices in Motion organization) as well as in refugee camps around the world.  Setting up a space of calm within the chaos, where children can have access to art, books and music, aid workers have shared The Book of Rounds at such refugee camps as Lesvos Greece, the Sinjar district of Northern Iraq and at a camp for Ukrainian refugees in Moldova, where, in spite of the language differences, the beauty and comforting embrace of the rounds helps soothe displaced and traumatized children.

Why? The Book of Rounds offers comfort to a troubled world. Written to promote feelings of well-being, each of the 21 songs is a fugue of positive messages set into musical rounds that strengthen and expand those messages with each repetition.  

Says Ryan Heller, Conductor and Artistic Director of Chorus Austin, who premiered the work with close to 200 performers, “October Project has captured something that the world needs right now with The Book of Rounds. Each of the 21 rounds combines to form a composite whole that resonates with what it means to be human.”

With the re-release this month of the original, intimate recording, October Project intends forThe Book of Rounds’ messages of comfort, love and hope to reverberate ever more widely outward, bringing harmony to these dissonant times.

PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

• GRAMMY Consideration
• Best Choral Performance (2016), The Book of Rounds: 21 Songs of Grace
• Best Choral Performance (2021), Virtual Choir of Joy
• Best Arrangement (2021), Virtual Choir of Joy
• Best Choral Performance (2021), The Book of Rounds: Choral Edition
• Telly Award (2021, Bronze) – The Virtual Choir of Joy
• Anthem Award (2022, Silver) – The Virtual Choir of Joy
• Performed by thousands of singers around the world, including Symphonic, Chamber, University, Community, Children’s, Festival, Honor and A Cappella choirs.