Eva Baltazar

In 1906, Komitas gave a concert and lecture in Paris. Debussy came on stage after the concert and knelt before the Armenian composer (who was also a priest, a singer and a pioneer of ethnomusicology), exclaiming: ‘I bow before your genius, Reverend Father.’

Released Saturday 16th October as part of National Album Day 2021. All pre orders will be made ready for collection on that date. Postal orders will be dispatched from Monday 18th October.

Eva Alcaide, in addition to having collaborated with a large number of artists over time and having great live experience, has a remarkable academic record to her credit, consolidating her training at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland by completing a master's degree in Jazz Guitar Performance.

In the seventeenth century, the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice took in young orphan girls who received advanced musical instruction. The concerts given there attracted visitors from all over the world, curious to hear these divine voices which remained invisible, since the girls performed hidden behind the grilles of the chapel gallery. Vivaldi became Maestro de’ Concerti of the Pietà in 1714, and it was his pupils who performed his famous Nisi Dominus. Today they are succeeded by the mezzo-soprano Eva Zaïcik, who brings out the full poignancy of the aria ‘Cum dederit’. Another motet by Vivaldi, Invicti bellate, also composed for the Pietà, features in this programme planned and conducted by Vincent Dumestre. He invites us on a musical journey centred on the figure of woman and on divine praise, with composers awaiting discovery such as Serafino Razzi (1534-1619) and Soto de Langa (1531-1611).

Born in 1624, Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli was brought up partly in Venice and ended up in Innsbruck as a member of the Court Band. His name crops up later as a violinist in churches and at court in Messina and finally in Madrid, where it is likely that he died in 1687. There were two important stylistic periods for violin literature in the 17th century. In the early decades, a corpus of instrumental music appeared in northern Italy, with the first solo music explicitly for violin being written by composers such as Castello, Fontana and – most of all – Marini. Towards the tail-end of the century, we see the flowering of a refined culture of instrumental music in Austria, dominated by virtuosi such as Biber, Walther and Schmelzer. Pandolfi Mealli was caught in the middle, not being a follower of either school, and may have been somewhat lost from view among all these star performers.

Eva Kruse writes: "This music is for you. No matter how old you are. No matter where you come from. No matter where you go. Peace & Love." Eva Kruse studied acoustic bass and improvisation at the university of arts "UdK" in Berlin with Sigi Busch, Jerry Granelli and David Friedman. She also studied in Sweden with bassist and professor Anders Jormin. From 1999-2001 she was a member of the German youth-jazzorchester "BuJazzO," where she took classes with pianist John Taylor who inspired her to start writing music for different bands and projects. She has released five albums on ACT Records, toured worldwide over the last ten years, and has won two Grammys in Germany alongside her ensemble the "Eva Kruse Trio."