All around me are familiar faces

*MAD WORLD sung a cappella by TONUS PEREGRINUS*
This new arrangement of the 80s Tears for Fears hit is the title
track of a Mad World E.P. available exclusively through iTunes
and featuring two additional tracks - a new setting of George
Herbert's 'The Flower' and an extract from a cycle of music by
Antony Pitts premièred at this year's London Festival of
Contemporary Church Music.
a CD.TP exclusive on iTunes - click on the iTunes logo at
www.tonusperegrinus.co.uk, or search
for 'Tonus Peregrinus' on iTunes, or use the partner link below:
http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=Tqx9IymwMNI&offerid=78941&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa%252Fwa%252FviewAlbum%253Fi%253D253598077%2526id%253D253598048%2526s%253D143444%2526partnerId%253D30
(please feel free to pass this link on to anyone interested)

TP director and arranger Antony Pitts says:
'Mad World' was the first song that the band I was in at school
tried to cover.  Fortunately that version never made recorded
history, but the melodies and harmony of the song have remained
with me ever since.  'Mad World' sounds very English to me and I
can hear all sorts of resonances with the 15th- and 16th-century
English choral music that I love and which TONUS PEREGRINUS has
been singing since we started in Oxford in 1990.

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
'cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad world
Mad world.

All three tracks on the Mad World E.P. were first broadcast in a
radiophonic piece 'Not In My Name' written for BBC Radio 3 with
Gary Watt, and featuring the voices of John Crook, Christopher
Gunness, and Sally Phillips.

'The Flower' was written on the occasion of the baptism of Edward
Flower in 2005.  For the radio piece, 'Not In My Name' the sixth
verse of George Herbert's exquisite poem was recited by
Christopher Gunness in Jerusalem:

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
             I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my onely light,
                                      It cannot be
                                      That I am he
             On whom Thy tempests fell all night.

'Lazarus!' is the alternative title for 'I AM the Resurrection
and the Life' which was the first to be written of eight motets
setting Jesus' challenging "I AM" sayings.  The complete cycle
received its world première on Saturday 19 May as the concluding
concert of the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music.
http://tonusperegrinus.co.uk/AlphaOmegaPROGRAMME.pdf