-
They Are At Rest – Program Notes
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, an armistice was signed which brought to a close the greatest human conflict so far known to man. What had begun as a border dispute in the Balkan States of South-Eastern Europe in 1914, expected to last but a few weeks,…
-
Cappella Romana Welcomes Superstar Basso Profundo Glenn Miller for “The Vigil”
Among singers, they’re known as basso profundos. In Russian Orthodox music, they are referred to as oktavists. Whatever you call them, they are one of the rarest – and lowest – voice parts, often singing a full octave below the normal bass range, adding new dimension and depth to the sound of an ensemble. To…
-
Venice in the East
Venice In The East: April 27-29, 2018 Program Notes by Alexander Lingas From its emergence as a significant political entity in the sixth century under the rule of the Eastern Roman (“Byzantine”) Empire to the dissolution of the Republic by Napoleon in 1797, the city of Venice remained closely tied to the Greek East. Following…
-
Northwest Focus features Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame
In the lead-up to our Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame series, Seattle’s KING FM will be previewing the performance with Cappella Romana recordings on the Northwest Focus program! See the schedule: Date Time Music Mon, Jan 29 9:00pm Byzas: Sticheron Apostichon Idiomelon for St. Basil Tues, Jan 30 9:21pm Dufay: Lamentatio Sanctae Matris Ecclesiae Constantinpolitanae…
-
Marcel Pérès Returns for Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame
Following his Cappella Romana début in 2012 leading powerful chants from Santiago de Compostela, international early music star Marcel Pérès from Paris directs the earliest known Mass setting by a single composer, Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377), with chants for Candlemas. Widely considered an iconoclast in the early music movement, Medieval Latin chant specialist Marcel Pérès…
-
Venice in the North
Following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the peoples of Russia and Ukraine began to look to the West not only for trading partners, but also for political, intellectual and artistic models. The Westernization of northern Slavic societies rooted in Byzantine traditions of governance and religion accelerated during the tumultuous seventeenth century, which saw…
-
Behind the Arvo Pärt Festival Logo
The logo for Cappella Romana’s Arvo Pärt Festival, which begins on Sunday, has some hidden meanings we’d like you to notice. First, the P in Pärt and the T in Festival are aligned in order to form a Staurogram, a ligature in ancient Christian manuscripts for the noun “cross” or its verb form “crucify.” The…
-
Gramophone Magazine Names Steinberg: Passion Week An Editor’s Choice!
Gramophone Magazine names our new Maximilian Steinberg: Passion Week recording an August Editor’s Choice! “This important and exciting release from the Portland, Oregon-based 26-strong chamber choir is a notable successor to their ‘Good Friday in Jerusalem’ disc (5/15). … This recording closely followed what is believed to have been the premiere complete performance by these…
-
MusicWeb International Reviews Good Friday In Jerusalem
MusicWeb International critic Garry Higginson recalls his own Holy Week in Jerusalem experience while listening to Cappella Romana’s new Good Friday in Jerusalem recording: “Jerusalem was filled with people of all nations, as befits a city of pilgrimage. Droves of superior-looking tourists who had come to gaze curiously on the rites of the Eastern Church…
-
Passion Week a MusicWeb Recording of the Month
MusicWeb International critic John Quinn names our Maximilian Steinberg: Passion Week a RECORDING OF THE MONTH! “Passion Week is one of the finest and most moving Orthodox settings that I’ve encountered and I’ve been excited by getting to know it. It’s particularly pleasing that this music should receive its first recording from such a fine…
-
AllMusic Reviews Good Friday In Jerusalem
AllMusic.com’s James Manheim has a new review for our Good Friday In Jerusalem release! “It takes a good deal of scholarly effort to reconstruct a program like this from manuscripts in various places (some are Armenian) and at various levels of notational detail. The result, though, is spectacular. The chants were sung (if this reconstruction…
-
Good Friday In Jerusalem Concert Program
Our concert features excerpts from the “Service of the Holy Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ” as it would have been celebrated in Jerusalem during the tenth century. The ancestor of the service celebrated in the modern Byzantine rite on Holy Thursday evening, this is a stational version of the office of early morning prayer…
You must be logged in to post a comment.