Lauren Golden

“I just wanted to be honest about everything, from my musical influences to my story,” muses Neal Francis. After years of dishonest living—consumed by drugs, alcohol, and addiction—such sincerity is jarring from the 30-year-old Chicago-based musician. Liberated from a self-destructive past and born anew in sobriety, Francis has captured an inspired collection of songs steeped in New Orleans rhythms, Chicago blues, and early 70s rock n’ roll. There is a deep connection between Francis’s childhood—his obsession with boogie woogie piano, his father’s gift of a dusty Dr. John LP—and the songs he’s created. The result is an astonishing collection of material without parallel in the contemporary funk and soul scene.

Alexander’s Feast or the Power of Musick was first performed at the Covent Garden Theatre in 1736, at a time when the interest of Londoners in Italian opera was waning and Georg Friedrich Händel increasingly turned towards English-language oratorios. The libretto is based on the eponymous and highly popular ode by John Dryden (1697) celebrating Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Along with the Messiah, the ode quickly became one of Händel’s most acclaimed works. His art, which “is of Arcadian beauty at times” (Karl-Heinz Ott), is celebrated in all its facets in The Power of Musick. The period instrument ensemble Barucco, the Wiener Singakademie Kammerchor and a trio of outstanding soloists under the baton of Heinz Ferlesch hold out the promise of a splendid baroque feast.