Track Listing

1. Songbird
2. The Flower Duet (from Lakmé)
3. Salve Regina (based on Pachelbel's Canon)
4. Steal Away
5. The Windmills Of Your Mind
6. Barcarolle (from The Tales of Hoffman)
7. Silent Night
8. Hosanna
9. Ave Verum Corpus (theme from Brideshead Revisited)
10. Angels
11. Ave Maria
12. Pokarekare Ana
13. Agnus Dei

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #542 in Music
• Released on: 2006-11-13
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds
• Running time: 48 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
In keeping with the current trend for sophisticated fusions of pop and classical music, Universal now present the world's first all-female super-group. All Angels are comprised of four teenage girls - Melanie, Laura, Daisy and Charlotte - who besides being experienced choirgirls have diverse modern listening tastes that span Ella Fitzgerald, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Billie Holiday, Alicia Keys and Coldplay. All Angels, their debut album, starts off with the band's first single, an inspired cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Songbird", a track popularised by Eva Cassidy. The youthful power and subtle glamour of the girls' voices is immediately evident, and becomes even more so as they tackle pop songs like Robbie Williams' "Angels", Carole King's "You've Got A Friend" as well as traditional classial material such as Schubert's "Ave Maria", Barber's "Agnus Dei" and Offenbach's "Barcarolle". Slightly less predictable are their versions of "Sancta Maria" (from Pietro Mascagni's one act opera Cavelleria Rusticana) and "Salve Regina" (from Pachelbel's Canon In D). Manufactured they may be, but All Angels nonetheless provide an authentic listening experience. --Danny McKenna

CD Description
Debut album from the UK's latest classical crossover group,a quartet of teenage choirgirls whose musical tastes range from Ella Fitzgerald to Radiohead. Whilst their album is thetypical fusion of genres, with arrangements of popular songs by Robbie Williams, Fleetwood Mac and Carole King sitting alongside tracks from the classical repertoire and religiouschoral favourites, the girls are undoubtedly genuinely talented.

Customer Reviews

Angel Voices, ever singing
I have never been a fan of crossover CDs: usually the singers are far too contrite and `Songs-of-Praise' to merit any serious attention. The 300th recording of Bach's Ave Maria alongside a forty part a cappella rendition of Agadoo always seems so media-orientated and not for the listening audience.

This CD is a wonderful breath of fresh air in a market so saturated that most CDs are the same track listings sung by copy-cat singers. The four girls are very pretty and that will obvious draw crys of the group's being yet another manufactured group. Fortunately, the four girls are just as exquisite in voice as they are in looks. One particular singer, Laura Wright, sings with an extraordinary honesty in her voice, the sound entirely beautiful like her fellow singers: not manufactured or syrupy like some, not `celtic' and `ethereal' like some singers one hears. A very promising start for this young lady, who I believe is also the current BBC Radio 2 Chorister of the Year.

The choice of music is inspired, and there are some excellent musical arrangements: rather than existing purely for cheese and profit, some academic purpose and skilled musicianship appears to have gone into this production. The voices soar effortlessly, but with purpose, in Barber's Agnus Dei (with an astonishingly good male-voice choir singing the lower parts); Robbie Williams' Angels sounds terrific with the voices in octaves; Geoffrey Burgon's Brideshead Revisited theme (a personal favourite) is given a make over as a setting of Ave verum corpus - some may say that this smacks of cheese, but no more so than settings by Saint-Saëns and Gounod, and the stylish singing here is both convincing and captivating.

I hope that these young ladies will not be too London bound or feel pressured by the media, and continue to make good honest music. All in all, an excellent purchase that not only bears repeated listening, but insists upon it.

Uplifting and Angelic
I am REALLY looking forward to this album coming out. I had the pleasure of seeing them live at BBC Young Choristers of the Year. They had such an uplifting and angelic quality about them and the arrangements of the songs they sang (including Eva Cassidy's Songbird, Steal Away and Robbie Williams' Angels) were absolutely beautiful, especially Songbird - I was close to tears when they sang it.
The girls themselves (so I've heard) are really down to earth and lovely.
Steve Abbott (manager of All Angels, Hayley Westenra and Aled Jones amongst others) definitely knows about talent.
Buy this album, and you will feel like you're in Heaven.

Divine!
I only heard of All Angels just before Christmas when one of them (forget which) was being interviewed on the Today program on Radio 4. Then she sang "Agnus Dei", and I was hooked!

I had the CD bought for me as a Christmas Present, and haven't stopped playing it since. The CD is in my car, and I have it on my MP3 player and my PC so I can listen to it anywhere.

Prepare to have your ears and senses seduced! "Music soothe the savage beast" is what these renditions deliver, and their arrangement of "The Windmills of your Mind" is particularly hypnotic.

Classic purists may not appreciate this music, but they miss the point: music is not meant to be a discipline; if it pleases the listener, then it has accomplished its goal.