Jaime Gomez Obregon

In a city where streets are overrun by drug dealers, those who have sworn to uphold the law are breaking them to clean up the streets. Denzel Washington plays L.A.P.D. detective Alonzo Harris, a veteran narcotics officer whose methods of enforcing the law are questionable, if not corrupt. 'Training Day' follows Harris as he trains rookie Jake Hoyt over a 24-hour period. Ethical dilemmas arise for Hoyt as well as the audience as questions present themselves as to whether or not Harris' methodology for ridding the streets of South Central Los Angeles of drugs is right or wrong.

In a lively and enterprising new disc devoted to the music of Antonio Caldara, cellist Josetxu Obregón leads his ensemble La Ritirata in instrumental and vocal works. In his youth in Venice (in the 1680s/1690s), Caldara drew significant praise for his own cello playing, and his understanding of the instrument and it's possibilities stayed with him throughout a career which saw him immersed also in the rich musical cultures of Mantua and Rome before he became a valued member of the Hofkapelle in Vienna; he worked there for the last twenty years of his life, contributing to the glories of the Austro-Italian Baroque at the Imperial Court of the highly musical Charles VI (whom Caldara had also served in Barcelona).

What was the first composition ever written for solo violoncello? What was composed before Bach created his extraordinary suites for solo cello?

In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, La Ritirata and Josetxu Obregon have created a program for Glossa sallying forth on the back of music composed by Antonio Caldara and inspired by El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Manch. Antonio Caldara was neither the first nor the last composer to have his compositional ingenuity sparked off by Cervantes' timeless masterpiece. Interspersed between these vocal contributions are a series of instrumental ballets composed for these operas.

In a new recording of music by Alessandro Scarlatti, Josetxu Obregóns La Ritirata parades its dazzling vocal and instrumental talents in presenting the four cantatas which involve recorders and violins, together with an additional standalone soprano aria, for a further Glossa Neapolitan-flavored release. Drawn from his well over 800 secular cantatas these works combine fully-integrated, imaginative recitatives, expressive and dramatic arias and colorful and exacting instrumental sinfonias and ritornelli into elegant and compact wholes, and featuring poetic texts which typically followed the aspirations of the Accademia degli Arcadi literary circle initiated in Rome around the turn of the eighteenth century.

After his Mass for a New Century and his Requiem, the French composer and organist Frédéric Ledroit has written a new Saint John Passion for soloists and large orchestra, first performed in 2018 in Germany by the interpreters of this recording. The composer writes: “… It will be too long here to describe the integration of symbolism and figurative forms included in this work, which was rewritten several times. To point out only one example, probably the most strange and immediately perceptible by the listener: the role of Saint John, successively represented by three singers, contralto, mezzo-soprano, and then soprano, from bass to treble, in this order in the score. Voices are raising as the action progresses. Exactly like Dante crawling into hell before flying in Paradise.”