Rice, Rice, Hillman & Pedersen

The Brabant Ensemble continue their investigation into unknown jewels of the Low Countries Renaissance, researched by their director Stephen Rice and recorded with equal amounts of passion and erudition by the young singers of the group. Cipriano de Rore was and is principally known as a madrigal composer, and, as Stephen Rice writes, ‘blended the contrapuntal complexity of Low Countries polyphonic style with Italian poetic texts to create a newly expressive vernacular genre’. This recording represents something of a new departure in presenting some of the least well-known aspects of the output of a composer who is justly famous in other fields.

Hildegard von Bingen & Hugh Collins Rice - Sequences - Ensemble Mediva (2016) {Odradek Records Official Digital Downloads}
FLAC (tracks) - 44kHz/16 bit - Official Digital Download (qobuz.com) -> 290 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 152 Mb
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© 2016 Odradek Records | ODRCD 322
Classical / Medieval / Early Music / 12th Century Music / Vocal

Hildegard von Bingen has the magical ability to reach out and speak to us across the centuries. An avant-garde visionary of her day, the depth and range of her music lends itself to modern re-imaginings. Sequentiae Hildegardenses was written over a period of 12 years in a special collaboration between the composer Hugh Collins Rice and the medieval ensemble Mediva. Collins Rice, who has often been drawn to the ideas and techniques of early music, was inspired by Mediva s medieval instruments and developed a musical language for Sequentiae Hildegardenses which remains authentic and expressive in a 21st-century context, whilst also illuminating the 12th-century music of Hildegard. His music references the serene world of Hildegard's own compositions, but also reflects the darker strands in her writings.

Jean Mouton was a Renaissance French composer and choirmaster, much acknowledged but more rarely recorded, who wrote a body of music that’s both technically inventive and immediately appealing. Here Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble—renowned exponents of sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish repertoire—perform all Mouton’s eight-part music, two four-part motets, and his only five-part Mass setting, the Missa Tu es Petrus. The latter is characterized by light, clear textures and a soaring cantus firmus, while the double-choir Nesciens mater is rightly famous for its ingenious canon. Sheer compositional skill aside, all these works demonstrate Mouton’s vivid and original imagination—one that has the ability to speak directly to our time.

Don Cherry - Brown Rice (1976) {A&M 397 001-2}
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© 1976, 1989 A&M Records / Polydor / PolyGram | 397 001-2
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Free Funk / Trumpet

If Eternal Rhythm was Don Cherry's world fusion masterpiece of the '60s, then Brown Rice is its equivalent for the '70s. But where Eternal Rhythm set global influences in a free jazz framework, Brown Rice's core sound is substantially different, wedding Indian, African, and Arabic music to Miles Davis' electrified jazz-rock innovations. And although purists will likely react here the same way they did to post-Bitches Brew Davis, Brown Rice is a stunning success by any other standard. By turns hypnotic and exhilarating, the record sounds utterly otherworldly: the polyrhythmic grooves are deep and driving, the soloing spiritual and free, and the plentiful recording effects trippy and mysterious.