Even When He is Silent marks the recording debut of Nordic Vocalists, an ensemble of twelve professional singers conducted by Patrik Sandin, and the first production for Footprint Records. The album gathers first-time recordings of three Swedish composers — Anna-Karin Klockar, Ingunn Ligaarden and the late Sven-David Sandström, a giant of Swedish contemporary choral music, represented here by his previously unrecorded Psalm 121 and Seventeenth Century Nun's Prayer. Many of the texts carry extraordinary histories: the words of the Nun's Prayer were found written on a monastery wall by an anonymous nun, while the title track sets a text discovered after the Second World War on the wall of an underground room in Cologne that had sheltered Jewish refugees — a meditation on hope in the darkest hour. The settings by Klockar and Ligaarden draw on Swedish and American poets, with all Swedish texts translated into English in the accompanying booklet. The result is choral singing of the very highest order.