Review: All Is Miracle: The Choral Music of Kyle Pederson 

Choral Journal, September 2026, Volume 67, Number 2

All Is Miracle: The Choral Music of Kyle Pederson
Transept, Timothy J. Campbell, director
Navona Records, 2025

All Is Miracle: The Choral Music of Kyle Pederson is a release from the Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based choral ensemble Transept, directed by Timothy J. Campbell. Transept functions both as a forty-plus-member choir and as a twelve-voice consort of soloists featured throughout the album. Recorded in 2024, the project is devoted entirely to the choral works of Minneapolis-based composer Kyle Pederson and offers a compelling blend of unaccompanied selections and collaboratively accompanied works. Pederson, himself a native of Sioux Falls, brings added resonance to the recording, creating something of an artistic homecoming through this thoughtful partnership between composer and ensemble. He was also commissioned to compose for the 2026 Eastern ACDA Region’s Envision conference in Providence, Rhode Island. This album includes new compositions, arrangements of traditional hymn tunes, fresh text settings, and representative works drawn from across the composer’s oeuvre.

Recorded at the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Sioux Falls and produced by the Grammy Award-winning team at Soundmirror, Inc., the album boasts a seamless and pristine sound quality. The cathedral provides an ideal acoustic environment, allowing the full spectrum of tonal color to bloom while preserving exceptional textual clarity. Each selection is rendered with transparency and care, and the programming unfolds organically from one piece to the next, resulting in a cohesive and beautifully curated collection of stand-alone octavos. The album contains seventeen individual works, but the centerpiece, All Is Miracle, commissioned for Transept, is truly breathtaking. Set to poetry by Charles Anthony Silvestri, the work pairs evocative text with Pederson’s signature part-writing. It recalls the polychordal richness and “crunch-chord” sonorities of 1990’s choral writing while maintaining Pederson’s distinctive harmonic language. Though structurally straightforward, its power lies in the luminous simplicity of its harmonies, supported by a warm and expressive piano underlay.

The opening measures evoke the atmosphere of a cinematic score before the choir enters in hushed reverence. Mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski and soprano Savannah Porter bring warmth and brilliance to the texture without overshadowing the ensemble; instead, they function as an integrated fifth voice within the choral fabric. Collaborative pianist Paul Sanchez, featured prominently throughout the album, lends both weight and tenderness to the work, deepening its emotional impact.

Stars, the first selection to feature the twelve-voice consort, is an award-winning work composed in 2016. Its seemingly straightforward four-part SATB texture belies the challenges of intricate tuning and shifting compound meters that propel the music forward with quiet intensity. Introspective and expansive, the work invites the listener to contemplate the night sky and meditate on distant light piercing the darkness.

Some of the album’s most compelling collaborations appear at its center. Sanctus, another commission for Transept, combines the full choir with pianist Paul Sanchez and organist Jared Ostermann. The piece begins in a simple four-part texture before expanding into an eight-part anthem of striking breadth. Piano and organ provide a sustained harmonic foundation while chant-like motives are seamlessly exchanged among the vocal lines. Though concise, the work is a vivid example of the collaborative synergy between keyboards and choir.

Last Words, also positioned near the center of the album, is an ethereal unaccompanied setting drawn from three Gospel accounts of the crucifixion, commonly known as the Seven Last Words. Pederson weaves Latin and English texts together with striking dramatic intent: the English text offers the narrative perspective, while an octet emerging from within the choir sings Christ’s words in Latin. This layered approach heightens emotional tension and drives forward a palpable sense of anguish and inevitability. Yet the work resists closure. Rather than concluding with a definitive cadence, Pederson leaves the listener suspended on a delicate, unresolved chord, neither final nor anticipatory, mirroring the weight of the impending crucifixion.

Near the close of the hour-long album is an arrangement of Philipp Nicolai’s Wake, Awake, titled O Morning Star, also commissioned for Transept. The familiar chorale melody is enriched with modern metric shifts and textural variation, making it an effective penultimate selection. It provides a striking contrast to the final track, God Be with You ’Til We Meet Again, a heartfelt arrangement composed in honor of Pederson’s alma mater, the Augustana Choir in Sioux Falls. Featuring guitarist Jared Waln and soprano soloist Kayleen Sánchez, the piece embodies poignant simplicity and quiet beauty.

Pederson and Campbell have created a sonorous and thoughtfully designed compilation that highlights both the composer’s expressive range and Transept’s artistic excellence. This significant recording not only showcases a wide cross-section of Pederson’s choral writing but also affirms the vitality and passion for choral artistry flourishing in the Upper Midwest.

Nicholaus Cummins
Assistant Professor and
Director of Choral Activities
Mississippi State University
nmcummins@colled.msstate.edu