Madrigal

The brainchild of Kevin Dodson, a former architect of the cult progressive rock band Madrigal, The Madrigal Project seeks to breathe new life into the progressive rock genre with ambitious songwriting, high production values and a stellar lineup of all-star musicians. The debut album '11th Hour' features an impressive roster of guest musicians, each bringing their unique individual talents to the project. The music on ‘11th Hour’ is inspired by legends like Gentle Giant, Peter Hammill, Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Peter Gabriel and combines progressive rock’s classic elements with modern sensibilities. Kevin Dodson’s songwriting, drumming, and vocals are central to the album’s dynamic and unique sound.

The extraordinary series of 1998-2006 recordings of the nine published books of madrigals by Monteverdi, from Claudio Cavina and the Italian ensemble La Venexiana, is now available in limited-time and limited-number boxed set form from Glossa. This multi-award-winning cycle set new standards in textual declamation, rhetorical color and harmonic refinement. Also included is the Live in Corsica album of Monteverdi madrigals (2002) and a newly-written essay by original series essayist Stefano Russomanno of which all, along with full texts and translations in PDF form, are also included.

The chamber music of Bohuslav Martinu, more French than Czech, suggests the music Debussy might have written had he lived to experience the full flowering of the neo-classic movement. No one would claim that it has a large emotional range, but for the imaginative use of textures within a restricted environment it's unmatched. The simplest pizzicato seems to carry all kinds of suspense, even as the general mood of the music remains blithe, even sunny in the case of the Sonata for flute and piano, H. 308, written as Martinu waited out World War II on Cape Cod.

Andrea Gabrieli has always been something of a textbook composer, whose reputation falls under the shadow of his more famous nephew, Giovanni, the composer par excellence of the grand Venetian polychoral manner. Though Andrea's music may not plumb the depths of Giovanni's best pieces, his compositional range displays a versatility that the writing of his more considered relation surely lacks. Whereas Giovanni concentrated on liturgical composition, Andrea explored the gamut of contemporary styles and forms, from madrigals and lighter secular writing to dialect texts, church music, instrumental works, experimental theatre-pieces and music for Venetian festivities.

Zelenka was the most important Bohemian composer before Gluck. He wrote no operas and few instrumental works, but a great body of sacred music for the Catholic court at Dresden plus a few choice secular works. His music is characterized by passus duriusculus – chromatic descent. Another distinguishing characteristic is slow triplets – not infrequently used by Zelenka, though rarely heard in the works of better known late baroque composers.

The sixteenth-century madrigal, a deceptively simple, whimsical poetic form of no fixed structure, had an elusive quality that was to prove inspirational to generations of musicians; madrigal settings came to form the core of many composers’ outputs and quickly evolved a musical identity independent of their poetic origins.

The sixteenth-century madrigal, a deceptively simple, whimsical poetic form of no fixed structure, had an elusive quality that was to prove inspirational to generations of musicians; madrigal settings came to form the core of many composers’ outputs and quickly evolved a musical identity independent of their poetic origins.

The sixteenth-century madrigal, a deceptively simple, whimsical poetic form of no fixed structure, had an elusive quality that was to prove inspirational to generations of musicians; madrigal settings came to form the core of many composers’ outputs and quickly evolved a musical identity independent of their poetic origins.