AVAILABLE IN EARLY FEBRAURY 2022
The first comprehensive resource of its kind, Gloriosi: Music of the Paschal Triduum / Música del Triduo Pascual contains a treasure trove of ritual music that bridges linguistic, cultural, and musical differences for the liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. Weaving together familiar tunes and ancient chants with newly-composed pieces, Tony Alonso has meticulously crafted the music of Gloriosi to inspire the participation of a diverse assembly during these celebrations at the heart of the liturgical year. In addition to settings of all of the ritual texts found in the Roman Missal / Misal Romano for the Three Days, this collection contains settings of every prescribed psalm drawn from texts approved for liturgical use in English and in Spanish.
For most of my life, I have celebrated the liturgies of the Paschal Triduum in bilingual communities. For all of its pastoral challenges, the blending of languages, cultures, and music during the liturgies of the Three Days has been one of the greatest liturgical blessings of my life. It has shaped how I have experienced the fullness of the Paschal Mystery and it has helped remind me both of the universality of the church and that God knows no native tongue. I pray that these songs—born from the communities in which I have had the privilege of celebrating the Triduum—will help pastoral musicians laboring to bridge differences of every kind to find a shared musical grammar to “glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered.”
—Tony Alonso
WINNER, 2021 HISPANIC THEOLOGICAL INTIATIVE BOOK PRIZE
Resist! This exhortation animates a remarkable range of theological reflection on consumer culture in the United States. And for many theologians, the source and summit of Christian cultural resistance is the Eucharist. In his first scholarly monograph, Commodified Communion, Tony Alonso calls into question this dominant mode of theological reflection on contemporary consumerism. Reducing the work of theology to resistance and centering Christian hope in a Eucharist that might better support it, he argues, undermines our ability to talk about the activity of God within a consumer culture. By reframing the question in terms of God’s activity in and in spite of consumer culture, this book offers a lived theological account of consumer culture that recognizes not only its deceptions but also traces of truth in its broken promises and fallen hopes.
This is a fascinating, lucid, and engaging account of the problems with attempts to resist capitalist consumerism with an idealized logic of the Eucharist. It makes important contributions to liturgical and ritual studies and Eucharistic theologies, as well as to theological and ethical critiques of consumption and capitalism more broadly. Antonio Eduardo Alonso provides a nuanced assessment of the Eucharist that accords both with lived experience and theological tradition, taking the reality of sin and persistent injustice seriously and also recalling a divine grace that can be invoked not just in spite of but together with such human and material brokenness. —Devin Singh, Dartmouth College
Commodified Communion is an extraordinary book. It is also extraordinarily important. Antonio Alonso offers a fresh and compelling reading of the Eucharist by attending to its celebration in a deeply commodified world. Most importantly, Commodified Communion offers a vision of hope beyond the trope of Eucharist as resistance, rooting hope instead in God’s own sovereign power to redeem. A fascinating and powerful read. —Teresa Berger, Yale Divinity School & Yale Institute of Sacred Music
The suite of songs (nominated for a Latin Grammy) and an accompanying album of their joyful performance...remind us of the gift of theologically complex art that religious traditions bestow on the world. Through a theological aesthetic approach, the music makes clear that what we may consider Art (in concert halls and museums) often begins with communities simply expressing their faith creatively. This is art: human creation that comes from the heart and moves our hearts.
—Cecilia González-Andrieu, America Magazine
The joy that permeates Cuban music is tangible on this album...The global church is edified by albums like this that are simultaneously specific in their expression and broad in their potential reach. May this album, and many like it, continue to knit together Spanish- and English-speaking congregations and neighborhoods.
—David Calvert, The Center for Congregational Song
2020 LATIN GRAMMY NOMINATED ALBUM
From the music of the Buena Vista Social Club to Gloria Estefan, the lyrical melodies and infectious rhythms of Cuban music have become embedded in U.S. culture. With Caminemos con Jesús / Let Us Walk with Jesus, composer Tony Alonso presents a groundbreaking collection of liturgical music that calls on his own Cuban musical heritage to provide new ways of singing the liturgy in Spanish, English or bilingually. The first project of its kind, Caminemos con Jesús not only utilizes rich Cuban idioms but also explores what style and musical form can teach us about praying together across cultural and linguistic boundaries.
The dynamic call-and-response form that is a hallmark of traditional Cuban music makes these songs especially compelling choices for bilingual worship, allowing assemblies to learn, internalize, and pray easily in both Spanish and English. “Qué Alegría Cuando Me Dijeron / I Rejoiced When I Heard Them Say” uses the words of the psalm as a rhythmic mantra, creating a fresh and engaging way to gather as the Body of Christ. “Letanía a la Madre de las Américas / Litany of Mary of The Americas,” invokes the Mary of many names and nations with a simple yet strong response that will enliven Marian feasts throughout the year. The gentle simplicity of “Tres Guajiros / Three Peasants” re-imagines the story of the Magi as humble peasants bringing gifts of the land to honor the newborn Jesus. Also, in this collection and for the first time in published form, is Gloria Estefan’s “Caridad,” a powerful and poetic prayer to Our Lady of Charity, the patroness of Cuba.
All of the pieces of this collection focus on the importance of bringing the voices of the assembly to the forefront while the arrangements are skillfully crafted to be accessible to musicians of all abilities. In addition to the spiral-bound edition, individual octavos, and flute and brass parts, Caminemos con Jesús offers a special edition featuring parts for guitar, percussion and other instruments central to Cuban music.
The studio recording is a stunning source of prayer and inspiration, produced in Miami by Grammy Award winner Juan Delgado and featuring some of the finest Cuban-American musicians today.
The third volume in this bestselling series, Revival III features arrangements of fourteen familiar Christmas carols for contemporary ensembles.
Christmas carols, like many traditional hymns, are often arranged for four-part choir and organ. With this collection, Tony Alonso focuses instead on the needs of the piano- or guitar-based ensemble, creating accessible carol arrangements for SAB voices, piano, and guitar. Also included is an optional alternate harmonization for the final stanza of each piece featuring a soprano descant.
Although these arrangements can be utilized as choral anthems, they are truly intended to lead and inspire congregational song. They are compatible with the texts found in a range of hymnals an can be edited easily to agree with the version of the carol most familiar to the assembly.