Adrienne D. Renee Bagby

En 1915, Adrienne Monnier inaugure au 7, rue de l'Odéon une librairie-bibliothèque de prêt d'un genre nouveau, La Maison des Amis des Livres, appelée à devenir le rendez-vous favori du Tout-Paris littéraire, d'Aragon à Walter Benjamin, d'André Gide à Nathalie Sarraute. En 1921, Sylvia Beach installe en face, au n° 12, une boutique fondée deux ans plus tôt sur le même modèle, Shakespeare and Company, dont les habitués ont pour noms Gertrude Stein, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Marianne Moore, Ernest Hemingway, Djuna Barnes…

This is the third in a series of five CD reissues from guitar legend Joe Diorio's classic Spitball Records recordings from the mid-70's. Originally released in 1976 on Spitball Records, "Straight Ahead to the Light" was recorded on May 23, 1976 at The First Unitarian Church in Miami, Florida and features Joe Diorio on guitar and Steve Bagby on percussion. Now available for the first time on CD including the original album cover artwork from the LP release. The album contains four original compositions by Joe Diorio and Steve Bagby which include "Straight Ahead to the Light", clocking in at over ten minutes long, "Gong", "India", another extended song that lasts for over ten minutes and "Bagbito" which features an extended percussion/drum solo by Steve Bagby…

Benjamin Bagby has spent his career as a scholar and performer immersed in the Medieval culture of western and northern Europe. The result has been numerous programs, recordings, performances, and publications, many of them with Sequentia, the outstanding ensemble he founded with his late wife, Barbara Thornton, in 1977. In this collection, Fragments for the End of Time 9th-11th Centuries, singer and harpist Bagby and flutist and harpist Norbert Rodenkirchen sing and play an assortment of apocalyptic fragments from Frankish, Bavarian, Alsatian, Saxon, and Aquitainian sources.

Benjamin Bagby’s legendary performance of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf (part I) recorded live in Helsingborg, Sweden (January, 2006)

“…a vivid demonstration of what has been lost in the process of becoming modern… Bagby, using a brilliant array of dramatic and rhetorical techniques, made it a dazzling experience. His performances should be recorded and made required listening…” — The Washington Post

In this remarkable one-man tour de force, Bagby, accompanying himself on an Anglo-Saxon harp, delivers this gripping tale — in the original Old English — as it could have been experienced more than 1000 years ago. This is a performance which will speak to many: lovers of Beowulf and oral epic, early music enthusiasts, Tolkien fans, medievalists, and anyone searching for virtuoso storytelling, great theater, or a glimpse into the fascinating beginnings of the English language.

bagbybeowulf.com

The Art of Renée Fleming brings together 18 defining tracks spanning Renée’s finest Decca recordings, including favorite arias by Puccini, Handel and Gershwin and duets with Bryn Terfel and Plácido Domingo. Four special bonus tracks reflect Renée’s prominence beyond classical repertoire with two Broadway classics, Amazing Grace - which she memorably sang at the site of the World Trade Centre and a brand new version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

Vox Iberica – Sequentia’s long-term project to record music from three of Spain’s most important musical sources – begins with music from the so-called Codex Calixtinus, a 12th century manuscript containing liturgical chant and polyphony in honour of Saint James the Apostle, otherwise known as Santiago, whose relics have been venerated by pilgrims since the Middle Ages in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. For this recording, the eight men’s voices of Sequentia join to record the complete polyphony found in this magnificent collection of sacred music, including some of the earliest polyphony to be clearly notated in a European source.