Renaissance Project

One of the people responsible for the Swedish prog revival of the '90s is Pär Lindh, a professional classical musician who grew up listening to prog rock in the '70s. Lindh was a member of the Royal Swedish Chamber Orchestra for four years before delving into progressive rock on a professional level, and he is a genuinely talented, sincere musician who does everything with a sense of integrity. Most people who bought this debut album probably did so because several members of the tragically short-lived but already legendary Swedish band Änglagård play on this album. Their performances are good, but anyone who expects this album to sound like Änglagård is likely to be sadly disappointed. …

Since founding L'Arpeggiata in 2000 as an early music ensemble, Christina Pluhar has taken it in some directions not usually associated with the rarified world of historically informed performance practice, particularly into the traditions of Southern European folk music and jazz. In Los Pájaros Perdidos: The South American Project, she ventures even further afield into the world of modern Latin American popular song and folk song. She argues persuasively that the Renaissance and Baroque instruments the Spanish introduced to the New World in the 16th and 17th century remained essentially the same, while back in Europe they developed in entirely new directions so that the difference between the sound of an early music ensemble and a popular South American instrumental group is less significant than one might expect.

TENET Vocal Artists, NYC’s pre-eminent early music ensemble, releases a CD of the final performance of its Green Mountain Project. For the past ten years, the Green Mountain Project has been made up of some of the best Baroque specialists in the United States for concerts of Claudio Monteverdi’s iconic Vespers of 1610 (Vespro della Beata Vergine). This live recording is a culmination of years of musical collaborations, and a celebration of the artists and supporters who made the past decade of performances possible.

The Dowland Project, established by ECM's Manfred Eicher, would not please musical purists; in this installment, Romaria, it brings together an assortment of old and new instruments, including violin, viola, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, tenor and bass recorders, Baroque guitar, and vihuela, performing music spanning nearly a millennium, most of it written before most of these instruments had been developed. The producer and performers may have deliberately chosen to ignore the principle of authentic performance practice, duplicating as closely as possible the sound of the music at the time it was created, but they are principled in the aesthetic decisions they have made.