Lorenz Tears

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career.

"Grease" is the original motion picture soundtrack for the 1978 film Grease originally released by RSO Records. The song "You're the One That I Want" was a US and UK #1 for stars John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. To date, it has sold over 30 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling soundtrack albums of all time.

This disc could top the early music charts in any of several categories: outstanding viol consort; best programming; superior engineering. And for sheer aesthetic beauty, it would be hard to find a recording that would score higher on the greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts scale. Jordi Savall and his Hespèrion XX ensemble pretty much own the viol repertoire, but usually we find them plumbing the works of continental composers from Spain, France, and Italy. Here we find them across the channel in Reformation England in what must have been the very satisfying task of bringing to light the seriously neglected instrumental music of Christopher Tye. Many observers would justifiably argue that although only 31 pieces exist, Tye's music for viol consort represents a summation of the genre–which in its complexities of texture and interdependence of the respective parts is the direct ancestor of the string quartet and other forms of chamber music. Savall and his five colleagues perform all 31 works, most of which are between two and three minutes long and primarily in a contrapuntal form known as In Nomine–a uniquely English creation, popular with many composers, in which a particular section from a John Taverner mass was used as a basis for the whole piece.