The Prayer Cycle
album by Jonathan Elias
The Prayer Cycle is a choral/orchestral album by American film and television composer Jonathan Elias. The album was released by Sony Classical Records in the United States on March 23, 1999.
The project, recorded and mixed by co-producer R. Walt Vincent, consists of a nine-part contemporary choral symphony in thirteen languages (Hungarian, Mali, Swahili, Dwala, Tibetan, German, French, Urdu, Latin, English, Italian, Hebrew, and Spanish). In the album's liner notes, Elias described the work as "a set of nine adagio prayers" that were influenced by his "personal views" about the future of humankind and the power of prayer across cultures. The contributing musical artists "used poems [he] wrote as inspiration, interpreting the words in their own way, in many different languages and chants."
The featured vocalists were Alanis Morissette, Salif Keita, Perry Farrell, Richard Bona, Yungchen Lhamo, Liz Constantine, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Mah Damba, James Taylor, Ofra Haza, and Linda Ronstadt. The featured instrumentalists were John Williams (guitar), Martin Tillman (processed cello), and Ethan James (hurdy gurdy). The featured artists were accompanied by The English Chamber Orchestra & Chorus, conducted by Lawrence Schwartz, and The American Boychoir, featuring Devin Provenzano.
Music from The Prayer Cycle was featured on the 1999 ABC documentary series called "The Century," which aired in six parts on March 29 and on April 1, 3, 5, 8 and 10.
The Prayer Cycle was played in its entirety for two Music from the Hearts of Space programs, "The Prayer Cycle" (program 536, originally aired September 10, 1999) and again as "Terror and Hope" (program 605, originally aired September 21, 2001) in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The entire work received its first live performance on April 28, 2013 when it was performed by the Branford High School choir at Woolsey Hall in New Haven, Connecticut.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Prayer Cycle” as album by Jonathan Elias. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as album by Jonathan Elias. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 23, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7758018. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2001 and 2013.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Prayer Cycle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.