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Byzantine Music in Cyprus
Manuscripts of Byzantine chant copied through the middle of the fifteenth century show that Cyprus remained closely tied to the musical mainstream of Byzantium. The two hymns (stichera) from the Greek office for St Hilarion included on the present recording are excerpts from a longer sequence of hymns interpolated on the eve of his feast…
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Cyprus — The Ars nova and its Byzantine Counterpart
Latin and Greek sacred music of the Middle Ages shared both roots in the Christian psalmody of Roman Late Antiquity and a common inheritance of Ancient Greek musical theory. Despite centuries of troubled relations between Byzantine Christianity and the Church of Rome that went from bad to worse with the Crusader sack and occupation of…
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Medieval Cyprus Between East and West
Located at a strategic point in the Eastern Mediterranean close to the coasts of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and the Middle East, the island of Cyprus has been a site of commercial and cultural interchange since the dawn of civilization. Christianity came to the island with the apostles Paul and Barnabas, the latter of whom…
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New MusicWeb Review for Maximilian Steinberg: Passion Week
After John Quinn named Maximilian Steinberg: Passion Week an April “Recording of the Month”, another MusicWeb International critic has been listening to our world premiere recording: “It is hard to imagine the turmoil surrounding conflict and persecution between the Communist state and the Church in this period, and even more so on hearing this tender…
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Oregon ArtsWatch Reviews From Darkness to Light
Oregon ArtsWatch critic Jeff Winslow weighed in on Cappella Romana’s recent performance of Schnittke’s Verses of Repentance during our From Darkness to Light concert: “Only a tin-eared deity could fail to be moved by such offerings. … In the final movement, over a constant drone from the low basses, the other voices, singing wordlessly with…
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Cappella Romana To Perform Rachmaninoff’s Concerto for Choir!
Guest Director Ivan Moody adds Rachmaninoff’s Concerto for Choir to the program From Darkness to Light! “Rachmaninoff’s wonderful choir concerto is the perfect work to anchor this program. His music was both a culmination of a great tradition and a starting point for so much of what followed in Russia. In many ways it is,…
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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…
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch Passion Week Review
Sarah Bryan Miller says Passion Week helps to “fill the gap” in music for Holy Week in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “In ‘Passion Week,’ which receives its world premiere recording here, that style is lushly traditional in the Russian Orthodox style. It’s paired with Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Chants for Holy Week.’ It’s all beautifully sung by Cappella…
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Steinberg Passion Week a “Landmark Recording”
The Orthodox Arts Journal‘s Benedict Sheehan gives Cappella Romana’s upcoming Maximilian Steinberg Passion Week an absolute rave: “Every so often a record comes along that changes the landscape of choral music.…The work itself is the sort of thing musicologists dream about: a treasure of inestimable musical value, hidden away in some attic or dusty library…
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Good Friday In Jerusalem: Musical Time Travel
Oregon Artswatch breaks down our Good Friday In Jerusalem Concert saying, “Vocal ensemble’s Passion performance transports listeners to millennium-old sacred service”: “On a strictly sonic level, the concert at Portland’s Trinity Episcopal Cathedral was magnificent … As with last year’s concerts of Finnish Orthodox music, it was especially satisfying to hear the singers perform music…
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Good Friday in Jerusalem a “Home Run”
The “Almost Rational” blogger, Steven Bilow, calls Good Friday In Jerusalem a “Home Run” in his review: “Cappella Romana’s Good Friday in Jerusalem is a superb example of just how lovely this music can be. It was recorded in a Church at Stanford and engineered by some clearly acoustically savvy members of Stanford’s Center for…
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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…
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