Archive for New York Polyphony

Best of the Year 2013

Posted in Reviews with tags , , , , , , on December 28, 2013 by Craig Zeichner

NY Polyphony
One of the advantages of not having to regularly write reviews – like I did for my Ariama job or Early Music America magazine — is having the freedom to listen to whatever I want to. But these three are by artists/ensembles who I would listen to any time/all the time. So the gold, silver and bronze medals go to:

New York Polyphony
Times Go By Turns
Times Go By Turns is a masterpiece, a superb album of English classics by Byrd, Tallis, Plummer and contemporary composers. The music by the contemporaries — Richard Rodney Bennett, Andrew Smith, and my personal favorite, Gabriel Jackson complements the early music perfectly. For me, Times Go By Turns achieves the near impossible; it takes familiar works — Masses for four voices by Byrd and Tallis — and makes you hear them in new ways. Times Go By Turns has been nominated for a Grammy, if there is any justice in this wicked world, New York Polyphony wins. I play this  one endlessly, easily the best album of the year.

Profeti Della Quinta
Il Montavano Hebreo
Profeti
Centuries ago I worked for a record label that produced recordings of music by the Mantuan Jewish composer Salomone Rossi. The best recordings of Rossi’s music that I’ve heard are by the Galilee-based vocal ensemble Profeti della Quinta. Their new album on the sonically stunning Linn Records label is Il Montavano Hebreo, a collection of Rossi’s instrumental music — the guy invented the trio sonata — devotional music and Italian madrigals. The group is coming to New York in January. If you are New Yorkers, don’t miss them!

Stile Antico
The Phoenix Rising
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Stile Antico keeps rolling along. It’s pretty rare when an ensemble just knocks out one mind-bending album after another, especially in the rarefied world of Renaissance polyphony. Not since the early days of the Tallis Scholars have I heard Tudor church music sung with such warmth and precision. Stile Antico, like New York Polyphony, are superb programmers too. Their program is drawn from Oxford University Press’s classic Tudor Church Music collection, but programmed with a careful ear. The Phoenix Rising features Byrd’s magnificent Mass for five voices with motets and anthems by Gibbons, Morley, Tallis, Taverner, and White placed between movements of the mass.

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Best of 2010

Posted in Reviews with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 16, 2010 by Craig Zeichner

It’s been a pretty good year for early music recordings with self-produced projects and indie label releases rising to the top of the class. Two New York-based ensembles won glory this year and recordings on the ATMA Classique label proved that Montréal is an early music capitol city. Here’s some of the best, what were your favorites?

Claude-Bénigne Balbastre: Music for Harpsichord
Elizabeth Farr, harpsichord
(Naxos)

Farr plays a big Keith Hill harpsichord with two buff stops and makes a great case for this music which balances wit with tenderness.



I Mercanti Di Venezia
La Bande Montréal
Eric Milnes, director
(ATMA Classique)

This is a superb recording of music by Jewish composers in Italy. It’s performed by an ensemble of A-list players from the city which has supplanted Boston as the epicenter of North American early music.

Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine
Green Mountain Project
Jolle Greenleaf and Scott Metcalfe, directors
(Green Mountain Project)

This was one of the most inspiring stories of the year, a recording by a handful of super-dedicated musicians who mounted a production of the Vespers to celebrate the work’s 400th anniversary. They performed the work on January 3rd, in what was probably the first performance of the Vespers in the anniversary year. By the way, it’s one of the very best recordings of the Vespers out there.

You can order directly from the Green Mountain Project and proceeds will help these folks repeat the performance on January 2, 2011.

O Praise the Lord, Restoration Music from Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey Choir
James O’Donnell, director
(Hyperion)

Hyperion’s ongoing series with the Westminster Abbey Choir has been uniformly superb. This one has music by John Blow, Henry Purcell and some lesser-known Restoration composers.



Peter Philips: Cantiones Sacrae 1612
Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge
Richard Marlow, conductor
(Chandos)

The Cantiones Sacrae are scored for five voices and glow with spiritual fervor and melodic beauty. The excellent Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge under the direction of Richard Marlow are marvelous.



Rosso, Italian Baroque Arias
Patricia Petibon, soprano
Venice Baroque Orchestra
Andrea Marcon, director
(DG)

Petibon is ideal in these high-flying showpieces by Handel, Scarlatti, Porpora and others.

Johann Hermann Schein: Opella Nova
Sagittarius
Michel Laplénie, director
(Editions Hortus)

Schein was one of the first German Protestant composers to assimilate the Italian style and write vocal concertos based on German chorale tunes—that’s a tasty blend! The French ensemble Sagittarius is superb and I hope they continue to record more of Schein’s music.

Senza Continuo
Margaret Little, viola da gamba
(ATMA Classique)

When I reviewed this one earlier this year I wrote, “I’ve never heard a bad recording involving viola da gambist Margaret Little.” I stand by the statement, this recording of works by English, French and Italian composers is essential listening.

John Sheppard: Media vita
Stile Antico
(Harmonia Mundi)

Audiences and critics have been tripping over themselves dishing out praise for this excellent ensemble and the truth is Stile Antico delivers as promised. Their vocal blend and tonal quality are brilliant, the clarity of their singing is top-flight.

Tudor City
New York Polyphony
(Avie)

While the Stile Antico love-fest/press blitz was rolling along, you might have missed Tudor City. I hope you didn’t, because this is a superb album, the best recording of early vocal music of the year. Worcester Fragments, Eton Choirbook music, Dunstable, Byrd, Tallis, Tye and Smith all sit together so well and the performances are stunners.

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New York Polyphony at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue

Posted in News with tags , , , , , on August 11, 2010 by Craig Zeichner

I am happy to see that New York Polyphony will be singing this Sunday’s service music at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue. They will be singing:

13th Century English Mass, from the Worcester Fragments (c. 1300)

Andrew Smith (b. 1970): Flors regalis

Beata viscera, from the Worcester Fragments

There will also be organ music by Buxtehude, Dupré and Langlais.

For more information, visit the Saint Thomas Church

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New York Polyphony – Tudor City

Posted in Reviews with tags , , , , , , , , on July 14, 2010 by Craig Zeichner

I liked these guys the first time I heard I Sing the Birth, their outstanding Christmas record of medieval, renaissance and contemporary music. The program was beautifully sung and the mix of repertoire really hung together well. It’s fine to program Perotin, Byrd and Kenneth Leighton on the same recording, but it’s another thing for it to all make musical sense. I Sing the Birth hit on all counts and it’s one of my favorite Christmas albums.

Each Sunday I get to hear some members of the group at church in the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys. I believe it was last year when New York Polyphony sang the Sunday morning service from the rear gallery of the church and it was a stunner. It’s sometimes tough to focus on the service when a group of such quality is singing.

They were singing from up here

Tudor City is their new recording on the always interesting Avie label. Like I Sing the Birth, Tudor City is marvelously programmed. This time its English music from the reign of the Tudors (1485-1603) and four specially commissioned pieces by Andrew Smith that are worked into the mix.

What a great sampling of English music! There’s a bit from the Worcester Fragments (just wondering, does anybody remember the Accademia Monteverdiana recording of the Fragments on Nonesuch?), an Eton Choirbook piece, some Dunstable, Byrd, Tallis, Tye and others that make for one powerful album. The Smith pieces fit smoothly into the medieval and renaissance soundscape yet have their own pungent, contemporary tone. Mr. Smith deserves to be better known because his Surrexit Christus and “To Mock Your Reign” are brilliant. Come to think of it, he is getting better known since Bora Yoon and Brian McKenna have remixed Surrexit Christus and it is now available on download from iTunes. I kid you not.

Bora Yoon

How does Tudor City sound? Damned good. Critics may trip over themselves praising Stile Antico (the fantastic mixed voice group from the UK), but as far as I am concerned Tudor City is the album they should be talking about. The New York Polyphony voices are perfectly balanced, lush and warm but with enough bite to give the tangy dissonances some punch. This is truly a breakout album.

Here’s New York Polyphony in Christopher Tye’s In Pace

By the way, for those of you who are not fortunate enough to live in New York, Tudor City is also a legendary residential complex on the Eastside (the cover of the album features the complex’s famous sign). New York Polyphony – Tudor City, it’s kind of a New York state of mind.

Heads-up to New Yorkers

New York Polyphony will be singing Flemish Polyphony at the Miller Theatre on November 20th.

One more bit, Jerusalem from Thomas Crecquillon’s setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah

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Early Music at the Miller Theatre

Posted in News with tags , , , , , , , , on June 16, 2010 by Craig Zeichner


The  upcoming season at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University has some choice  early music concerts. I can’t wait to hear Stile Antico, New York Polyphony,  Sequentia and Le Poème Harmonique. The Bach and the Baroque series looks pretty  hot too – TENET is a group that more audiences need to know and they have selected some fantastic repertoire.

Here are the details from the Miller Theatre press release:

Early Music

IN PARADISUM
October 16
An ensemble of a dozen unaccompanied singers, most still in their twenties and three who are sisters, Stile Antico is revitalizing Renaissance choral music. The group performs without a conductor, approaching choral works with the dynamic cohesion of a string quartet. This program focuses on the musical responses of composers faced with their own mortality, featuring swansongs and memorials by such masters as Lassus, Dufay, des Prez, and Byrd.

Stile Antico

GIANTS OF THE FLEMISH RENAISSANCE
November 20
New York Polyphony, rising stars on the early music scene, has been likened to Anonymous 4 for their impeccable ensemble and wide-ranging programming. They perform Flemish and Tudor music for men’s voices, bringing a unique richness to selections by Ockeghem, Brumel, Dunstable, and Taverner, including excerpts from their new album, Tudor City.

New York Polyphony

SONGS FROM THE ISLAND SANCTUARY
January 22
In the 12th century, the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was far more than a tourist mecca. It was an entire city unto itself, with a private port on the Seine and its own schools, laws, and social life. In this passionately performed, meticulously researched program, Benjamin Bagby and his acclaimed medieval ensemble Sequentia bring that bygone era to life, suffusing centuries-old music with striking immediacy.

Sequentia

ESPERAR, SENTIR, MORIR
February 19
Court composers in 17th century Spain and Italy often borrowed amply from street dances and folk songs, inspired by the rhythms, melodies, and improvisatory freedom of popular music. The ever-enticing Le Poème Harmonique returns to take us on a tour of this spirited music—complete with guitar and castanets. The program will feature the group’s soprano Claire Lefilliâtre, who garnered special mention after their performance last season: “Le Poème Harmonique’s five singers produced beautifully balanced sound, but the clear standout was Claire Lefilliâtre, who brought a virtuosic flair to the soaring, ambitiously ornamented soprano line.” (The New York Times)

Le Poème Harmonique

CELEBRATING THE GENIUS OF VICTORIA
April 2
The intensely spiritual, passionate music of Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria has moved generations of listeners. The Tallis Scholars return to the series with a program celebrating the 400th anniversary of Victoria’s death, focusing on his grandest choral works, including the composer’s crowning achievement: the monumental Requiem.

The Tallis Scholars

Bach and the Baroque

SEEING DOUBLE: CONCERTO BY BACH AND VIVALDI
March 26
One of the most respected period instrument ensembles in the world, REBEL has been praised by The Boston Globe as “vital…dashing…with performances that lacked nothing in inwardness, charm, or brilliance.” Antonio Vivaldi’s concerti for two solo instruments inspired some of Bach’s most brilliant music. Rebel explores the fascinating connection between the two composers in a program of double concerti for strings and harpsichords.

Rebel

RECLAIMING BACH FOR THE RECORDER
April 28
The delightful and entertaining Flanders Recorder Quartet has set out to right what they consider Bach’s sole shortcoming: his small output for recorder. The ensemble, whose delicate sound has been likened to Baroque organ, arranges works for keyboard and other instruments in this program, featuring Bach’s lively Italianate concerti, inventive preludes and fugues, beautifully expressive chorales, and monumental passacaglie.

Flanders Recorder Quartet

BACH AND HIS PREDECESSORS
May 14
Church of St. Mary the Virgin (145 W. 46th St.)
Bach revolutionized German music, but like all great composers, he had his forbearers, such as Heinrich Schütz and Dieterich Buxtehude. The “sensational” new ensemble TENET joins forces with Spiritus Collective to perform festive German Baroque works for voice, strings, and brass, culminating in Bach’s brilliant early motet Jesu, meine Freude.

TENET

Complete details are at the Miller Theatre website

Here’s New York Polyphony singing Christopher Tye’s In Pace

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