Infusion Baroque

Introducing "East is East", the latest album from Infusion Baroque. This fourth album from the Montreal-based ensemble is a fusion of Western Baroque, Persian and Indian music traditions. Featuring collaborators Amir Amiri, Hank Knox, Thibault Bertin-Maghit, Hamin Honari, Vidita Kanniks, and Shawn Mativetsky, the thirteen tracks see Western and Eastern musical traditions find common ground in transcultural music.In "Bergamasca" and "La Folia", baroque composers are realized with Persian santur, tombak, and daf alongside the Western harpsicord, violin, cello, and recorder. Amiri's compositions "Raghse Choobi" and "Aghrab" sees Persian folk melodies from Iran and Azerbaijan brought West, while "Saghi Nameh" and "Cortege" make use of Persian harmony alongside the textures of western counterpoint.

Known for her spirited and luminous sound, Baroque flute player Alexa Raine-Wright shares her eloquent interpretations with audiences across North America in solo, chamber and orchestral performances. This debut solo recording brings to light a collection of rarely heard works by Giovanni Benedetto Platti (1697–1763), a composer with one foot planted firmly in the Baroque, and the other foot pointed toward the Classical style. Equally at ease on the Baroque flute and recorder, American/Canadian Alexa Raine-Wright has shared her passion and talent for early music with audiences across the United States and Canada in solo, chamber and orchestral performances. Winner of several national and international competitions, Alexa was awarded the $10,000 Devonna & Amos Gerber Grand Prize as well as the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra Prize at the 2016 Indianapolis International Baroque Competition. ?Alexa is a founding member of the ensemble Infusion Baroque, winner of the Grand Prize and Audience Prize in the 2014 Early Music America Baroque Performance Competition in Chicago. She is also a member of the celebrated recorder quartet Flûte Alors!, Canada’s only recorder quartet.

Bright and inventive, the early-music vocal and instrumental group l’Arpeggiata—steered by intrepid theorbist and baroque harpist Christina Pluhar—takes us on an unapologetically idiosyncratic journey through Monteverdi. The Renaissance composer’s avant-garde tendencies are by turns revealed and exploited, most aggressively in the jazzy basso continuo cum walking bass of Ohimè ch’io cado and the swing treatment of the celebrated Chiome d’oro, but also, more subtly, in the gentle rubato of Pur ti miro, the light syncopation of Damigella tutta bella, and the adult-contemporary/Buena Vista Social Club–infused ostinato of Amor. Even seemingly familiar Renaissance fare (Sinfonie & Moresca) receives a late infusion of slightly alien percussion.

What is a "Zenph Re-Performance"? That may well be the first question for buyers who encounter the cover of this disc without benefit of prior discussion. The short answer: software developed by North Carolina's Zenph Studios that can analyze the sounds of an existing piano recording, breaking them down into digital (numerical) representations of their physical components – tempo, dynamics, attack, duration, even pedaling.