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Our Review

I received this title late, misplaced it, got into sort of a thing with its publicist, and then listened to it in reverse order. Plus, it is not, strictly speaking, a holiday release. In spite of all of this, I want to comment briefly on it because it is the sort of inspirational new age music that is still apropos around holiday time. Produced by Paul Schwartz and featuring Lisbeth Scott's vocals, this beautific offering might be of particular interest to fans of Enya or Lisa Gerrard. Its arrangements--some were soothing, some quite dramatic--quickly won me over, and I'm not even much of a new age fan. In addition to the eleven tracks making up State of Grace III, the disc contains two bonus tracks, one for each of the previous State of Grace releases. The music is uplifting and, at times, challenging; its appeal should easily extend to regular garden variety listeners.

--Richard Banks
(Reviewed in 2006)

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From the liner notes:

Produced by Paul Schwartz

Featuring Vocalist Lisbeth Scott
Except Salve Regina, vocals by Rebecca Luker

Cover design by Carla Leighton, Gloo Design, NYC From the publicist:

"As the CDs name implies, this is the third in a series of popular, best-selling, chart-climbing albums. Schwartz (a former conductor of top Broadway shows) also created another chart-topping series called ARIA (I, II and III). Those three ARIA CDs all went top 10 on BILLBOARDs Classical Crossover chart and were on the Top CDs of the Year chart too. The first ARIA album was on the chart for more than 100 weeks (nearly two years)! Both previous STATE OF GRACE albums also went Top 10 on the BILLBOARD New Age charts. This Schwartz guy is hot!

"Every song on STATE OF GRACE III sounds different. There are solo female vocalists (mostly Lisbeth Scott recently heard on The Chronicles of Narnia, choirs, real string orchestras, special guests like pop-classical violinist Lucia Micarelli (Josh Groban, Jethro Tull), some techno beats, booming Japanese drums and all kinds of wondrous sounds."

Paul Schwartz, featuring Lisbeth Scott

State of Grace III

Artist link

Track List