Tim Allen and Christine Westhoff

Since June 2013, I have started working in earnest towards a choral album. Ideas were bouncing around in my head, but still in the embryonic stage. Then towards the end of July 2013, my collaboration with talented lyric Soprano Christine Westhoff and husband Tim Allen, began. The start of this collaboration has led to the composition of a series of Arias, including one I wrote for my daughter, Fatimah, who is getting married this year.

Fatimah’s Aria is very special to me, as it expresses all the hopes a father could expect for his beautiful daughter on her special day. The fact that Christine could express this in her singing, is statement of her talent. Not only is her voice “pitch-perfect”, “angelic”, “powerful” and “beautiful”,through her singing, she projected the exact feeling I was hoping to capture in a recording for my precious daughter.
Working with Tim and Christine is a joy! Not only very talented and efficient, their work ethic is highly laudable!!

Thanks to them, we have recorded my daughter’s Aria, which will be played as I give her away on her big day at the end of Aug 2013.
Tim and Christine have also put together an ensemble of singers, specially for me, with Christine as Soprano, three like minded singers and with Tim at the piano. We are calling this ensemble, “The Westhoff Cantanti”. More on the Westhoff Cantanti on a later blog.
Thanks to their efforts, I am able to concentrate on completing the compositions for Chrysalis.
The text for these compositions, has been taken from the Latin Mass as well as from famous poems of Percy Shelley, Emily Dickinson, W.H Auden and Robert Frost.