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Passion Week composer Maximilian Steinberg
A little about the April 2014 Passion Week composer Maximilian Steinberg Russian composer and teacher, Maximilian Steinberg from the St Petersburg University conservatory in 1908 where his teachers had been Rimsky-Korsakov (composition), Lyadov (harmony) and Glazunov (orchestration). In 1908 he began his teaching career at the conservatory, where he was a teacher of noted students…
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A Time For Life — Structure
The composite text for A Time for Life was adapted from a wide range of sources that explore the relationship of humanity to nature. The work is structured in three large-scale parts, as follows: Part I: Creation In the first part, the nature of creation is celebrated through praise for the Creator and through rejoicing…
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Leitourgeia ka Qurbana reviews The Divine Liturgy
Richard Barrett’s Leitourgeia kai Qurbana: Contra den Zeitgeist blog has a thorough review of our new Tikey Zes: The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom recording: “Zes’ score is a remarkable piece of sacred choral composition on its own terms, and Cappella Romana is up to its usual high standards in terms of presentation of…
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Audiophile Audition Gives Five Stars to Hymns of Kassianí
Audiophile Audition gives a five-star review to Cappella Romana’s Hymns of Kassianí recording: “Kassia is especially known for one particular piece, the Hymn of Kassiani, so-called because of its placement in the orthros (matins) service of Holy Wednesday. It is a masterly composition of great pathos, commemorating the harlot who anointed the feet of Jesus and…
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Four Stars from ConcertoNet for Benedict Sheehan’s Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom
ConcertoNet‘s Linda Holt gives Four Stars to the Saint Tikhon Choir’s recording of Benedict Sheehan: Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom on Cappella Records: “a recording which succeeds fully as a musical work, albeit one that follows strict compositional and theological guidelines. Despite the heaviness of its intention, I found this work surprisingly elegant and light,…
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Ave Maria: Program Notes
Josquin des Prez and Heinrich Isaac were two Renaissance composers with two quite different characters, in music and in life. We know what Isaac’s signature looked like because he dutifully signed the account books as a musical servant of the Emperor Maximilian. We know what Josquin’s signature looked like because he carved it (not at…
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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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Oregon Arts Watch Review for “A Song of Creation”
Cappella Romana’s performance…was an electrifying, bristlingly intense superabundance of laser-beam monody and…florid counterpoint in the Eastern Orthodox style. … Here, the modern music was a vivid variety of sacred choral music by contemporary composers Matthew Arndt, John Michael Boyer, Alexander Khalil, Kurt Sander, Richard Toensing, and Tikey Zes. The six composers, according to the program,…
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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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Oregon ArtsWatch on The Tudor Choir
“The Tudor Choir re-opened for business this month. On hiatus since 2015, the ensemble presented one concert in their hometown of Seattle and two more in the Portland Metro area, at St. Mary’s Cathedral and in Hillsboro’s St. Matthew’s Church. The latter is a wonderfully accessible venue with a reverberant acoustic, challenging but with potential…
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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…
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Now Available — Sun of Justice: Byzantine Chant for Christmas in Greek, Arabic, and English
Order Now Sun of Justice: Byzantine Chant for Christmas in Greek, Arabic, and English Cappella Romana Media combines passion with scholarship in its exploration of early and contemporary music of the Christian East and West. A Holiday Record Unlike Any Other Disc 1: Traditional Chants in Greek and Arabic Disc 2: Traditional Chants in English…
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