With Gregory Brown’s FALL AND DECLINE on Navona Records, the composer chronicles the heights to which humanity can soar-but also the depths to which it may come crashing down. Scored for the solo voices of virtuosic vocal sextet Variant 6 and electronics, the sounds range from typical choral textures (though peppered with microtones) to angular and aggressive electronic soundscapes. The lyrics may span two-and-a-half millennia, but their spirit and subjects are abiding: humankind’s struggle against the limitations of time, conflict, inevitable decay. Persian rulers of the fifth century BCE, Baroque historians, poets of the Victorian age, contemporary wordsmiths, they are all caught in a grander, timeless labor-as is every one of us. FALL AND DECLINE is a stern reminder of Humanity’s ephemerality, but even more, it’s a harbinger of hope, a celebration of creative endeavors despite perpetual adversity.