Conductus News
- Choir
Last update
2024-04-25
Refresh
2021-02-12 09:20:47
Chant, improvisation and traditional instruments: Schola Cantorum Riga give us a taste of sacred music in Medieval Riga on Vox Clara on the Skani label
Vox Clara - Late Medieval Chant from Riga, Hamburg, Lund, Limoges; Schola Cantorum Riga, Guntars Prānis, Ieva Nimane; SKANI Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 February 2021 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½) The Latvian group bringing elements of traditional music into the performance of Late Medieval chant to give a taste of how the music might have sounded in Medieval Riga The Schola Cantorum Riga was founded over twenty year ago, exploring Gregorian chant and other early music repertoires from the oldest manuscripts as well as performing contemporary composers such as Rihards Dubra. The group was founded by Guntars Prānis, who is still artistic director, and Pranis' research interests include the sacred music tradition of Riga in the context of various local practices and this feeds into the group's latest disc. Vox Clara on the Skani label features Schola Cantorum Riga and Guntars Prānis in […]
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2015-11-12 16:05:15
Taking On Ruehr’s Cassandra
Elena Ruehr (file photo) Capella Clausura is nothing if not ambitious. Elena Ruehr (composer) and Gretchen Henderson (poet/librettist) wrote their Cassandra in the Temples, (described variously as a poetic opera and a choral opera) for performance by the hip New York-based vocal ensemble Room Full of Teeth. The “Teeth ” premiered it at M.I.T. almost exactly a year ago. While Capella Clausura’s Director Amelia LeClair did not hear that performance, she did hear Ruehr’s Eve, performed by The Cantata Singers BMInt review here ]. That powerful experience moved LeClair to approach Ruehr about a work for Capella Clausura. Ruehr seized the opportunity to suggest another performance of Cassandra, this one with staging so that the opera could be performed with the multiplicity of media that defines the genre. CC will also feature Aaron Copland and Rebecca Clarke works at Lindsay Chapel in Boston’s Back Bay on Saturday night, and […]
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2015-06-09 22:16:10
BEMFers Support Their Own
Tom Zajac “Tom Zajac’s generosity of spirit and many contributions to early music have influenced performers and delighted audiences near and far.” BEMF players gathered at the First Lutheran Church, Boston Monday to give back to the ill multi-instrumentalist in an inspiring benefit concert entitled Battaglia d’Amor. Since so many top-tier musicians came together to give freely and happily for one of their own, it was inevitable that some truly marvelous performances would ensue. Wayne Hankin astonished us with stunning musicianship by playing a version of Moinot D’arras’s Ce Fut en Mai on a tiny, four-holed clay pipe, resulting in something between virtuoso extemporization and birdsong. John Tyson’s expressively detailed recorder riffs on da Rore’s Signor mio caro, accompanied by his Renaissonics compatriot Miyuki Tsurutani on harpsichord, were an emotionally charged highlight of the evening, after which they were joined by members of Seven Times Salt for some beautifully […]
2015-01-09 00:59:06
[…] a lively loop by chamber ensemble Sympho . Then she shifts gears with the increasingly agitated Little Box of Horrors, a spoken-word-and-loops piece. Weights & Balances adds noir cabaret-tinged piano beneath Yoon’s New York angst-fueled existentialist contemplation of posterity and self-doubt: “Fate is what happens to you when you do absolutely nothing,” she asserts, seemingly as much a message to herself as to the world. The closest thing to traditional renaissance polyphony here is Semaphore Conductus, the choir’s precise sonics peppered with blippy percussive bits a la Radiohead. In New American Theatre, Sekou Sundiata narrates his understatedly corrosive portrait of our post-9/11 New York surveillance state over sarcastically dreamy loops. The album winds up with the very subtly mutating, mesmerizingly circular Doppler Dreams. It’ll be interesting to see how much sonic magic Yoon can coax out of the dry black-box theatre space at LaMama: this may call for more of […]