Giovanni

A renowned poet has a new album out Friday titled “The Gospel According To Nikki Giovanni.” In addition to publishing dozens of poetry works, Nikki Giovanni has recorded several spoken word albums over the course of 50 years. But this time, she’s doing something a little different. The new album, a collaboration with saxophonist Javon Jackson, is a collection of gospel hymns and spirituals set to jazz. Growing up in the Baptist church, Giovanni says gospel music was instrumental to understanding herself as a poet. “The spirituals had a message,” she says. “They weren't just some people woke up one morning or came from working in the evening and said, ‘Oh, let's sit down and sing.’ They were sharing information with each other.”

Corelli's older Roman contemporary, Alessandro Stradella, was held in high esteem both by his contemporaries and by later generations of composers. Among his patrons in Rome were the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden and the Colonna and Pamphili families. Stradella's amorous adventures, which eventually led to his murder in Genoa at the age of 37 subsequently gave rise to a novel, an opera by Flotow, a poem, a play and a song text. Though an outstanding oratorio composer he was considered in his own lifetime foremost as a composer for the theatre and his great gifts in this direction enabled him to treat the New Testament story of the imprisonment and murder of John the Baptist with considerable dramatic force.

A welcome return to Hyperion for Ex Cathedra and Jeffrey Skidmore, whose exuberant recordings of Baroque music from around the world have made them one of the best-loved ensembles of today. This latest release presents the music of Giovanni Gabrieli in his four-hundredth anniversary year. These magnificent liturgical settings from the heart of the Venetian polychoral tradition are full of drama, wonder and extraordinary spatial effects. His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts and Concerto Palatino provide the sonic gilding that would have been an essential part of the original performances, when extra musicians crowded the galleries of St Mark’s for special occasions.