About This Offer In the Mandala Vocal Project Participant offer you will receive the Mandala Vocal Concert (Via Download) as well as photo galleries, news entries, charts and interviews relating to the Mandala vocal project.

You will also receive the project experience from Joel Miller's current "Tantramar" project and be able hear the stories that inspired his works. You will gain insight into the process of producing my music. Participating in this project will take you on a journey through Joel's World with video of my live performances and rehearsals, photo galleries, sketches and journals.

"The inspiration to write four-part chorales dates back to my studies with arranger Neil Chotem and more recently, compositional workshops with Dave Douglas at the Banff International Jazz Workshop. Through Dave’s instruction I arranged my own melodies as well as folk material into four-part chorales. Combining the stylistic guidelines of chorale writing with jazz harmony provided me with a whole new range of compositional possibilities for my ensemble.

In 2005 I approached choral director Amelia MacMahon in order to collaborate on a new music initiative. Through rehearsing with her choir and my ensemble I was able to hear my works in a new context. I was also able to experiment and use the voice to double the tenor saxophone (myself), clarinet and trumpet in the Mandala “cosmogram” soli. This is a section from my composition Mandala that I had gradually expanded and developed on a 2005 National tour. The piece was performed at the Montreal Jazz Festival in the year 2006 with my ensemble and special guest choir Effusion, led by Amelia. The concert was a great success, and it affirmed another aspect of how I wanted my compositions to be presented in the future."