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A TIME FOR LIFE Now in Rehearsal
A TIME for LIFE: Music for the Environment Cappella Romana is in residence this week working on Robert Kyr’s innovative new work on the theme of living in harmony with nature, “A TIME FOR LIFE.” (Click here for a sound sample of music by Robert Kyr). Artistic Director Alexander Lingas is shown above, conducting, with…
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Tchaikovsky’s Divine Liturgy: Program Notes
Russian choral artistry, and especially its sacred choral singing, has long enjoyed the admiration of the Western musical world. After hearing the Choir of the Imperial Chapel of St. Petersburg in 1844, Robert Schumann wrote in his diary that “the Chapel is the most wonderful choir we have ever had the occasion of hearing.” Tchaikovsky…
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You can help us reach our $25K goal: Just $3K left to go!
As a student in 1991, I gathered a group of friends to share the beautiful and transformative musical inheritance of Byzantium. Today, over three decades later, Cappella Romana fulfills this mission on a global scale through performances, recordings, publications, and educational initiatives. None of this would have been possible without the generous financial support of…
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Arctic Light rehearsals begin
Fr. Ivan Moody has arrived from Portugal for a week-long residency with Cappella Romana. Here Fr. Ivan is shown conducting Cappella Romana in rehearsal, at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral in its new Hellenic American Cultural Center. (http://www.hellenicamericancc.org/)
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Lost Treasures of Armenia
The Holy Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church continues to embody a living tradition of primarily monodic vocal music of exceptional richness and beauty. Though its hymnography is traditionally believed to have commenced with the invention of the Armenian alphabet in the fifth century, and the Hymnal as a canonical collection was definitively closed in the fourteenth…
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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,…
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Oregon ArtsWatch Review for The Vigil
Oregon ArtsWatch contributor Friderike Heuer shares a review from our Sunday performance of The Vigil at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland: “I cannot even remember the last time I had goosebumps like this while listening to live music.…I sat on a Sunday afternoon in a church attempting to hold back tears and racking my…
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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…
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Ivan Moody Talks Akáthistos Hymn With iClassics
“The harmonies are lush and dark in Russian style, though periodically the shadows disperse as in a cloud-break and the sound brightens. The effect over the whole hymn is of a slow revelation of light and warmth over an ancient musical ground.” (Willamette Week) “Something new, substantial, and profound” (Sunday Oregonian) Standing Room Only — Ivan…
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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…
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The Russian Chant Revival
Major traditions of complex sacred music throughout Europe were shaped during the so-called “long nineteenth century” (the period of relative peace which lasted from the battle of Waterloo to the outbreak of World War I) by movements to recover elements of early traditions for modern use. These efforts, like contemporary “back-to-roots” endeavors in non-musical arts…
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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…
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