It’s been almost a decade since Casey Crescenzo brought The Dear Hunter - both the band and the character of the same name - to life with his 2006 debut full-length, Act I: The Lake South, The River North. This record revealed Crescenzo’s incredibly inventive and ambitious musical flair, something which has been evolving ever since. The two albums which followed - 2007’s Act II: The Meaning Of, And All Things Regarding Ms. Leading and 2009’s Act III: Life And Death - cemented the artist as a maverick, idiosyncratic talent whose music, while fitting a modern aesthetic, was also from a bygone era. Act I/Act II: This is the story of a boy, from his creation to his untimely end; from the beautifully rapturous to the truly tragic. The Dear Hunter sings of something to which we can all relate: lust, deceit, greed, and hunting…
This is, perhaps, the one. Derek Trucks has been on an aesthetic quest for something since he began his own recording career in 1997 – apart from his membership in the Allman Brothers Band. Each record has gone further into establishing Trucks not only as a slide guitar wizard (that happened when he was still in his teens), but also as a serious songwriter, fine arranger, and bandleader. The Derek Trucks Band, as evidenced by the release of 2003's Soul Serenade, is a unit – a band – whose core has been together for eight years. They create an atmosphere, a sound, a musical sense of place and community.
Some years ago Austrian radio ORF started a series of recordings with polyphony from the renaissance on its own label. The ensemble The Sound and the Fury has recorded music by well-known masters like Nicolas Gombert, Pierre de la Rue and Johannes Ockeghem. But they have also paid attention to some forgotten composers of the 15th century. One of them is Guillaume Faugues. As so often there is quite a difference between his reputation in his own time and in modern times. It is very likely nothing of his oeuvre has ever been recorded before.
Some years ago Austrian radio ORF started a series of recordings with polyphony from the renaissance on its own label. The ensemble The Sound and the Fury has recorded music by well-known masters like Nicolas Gombert, Pierre de la Rue and Johannes Ockeghem. But they have also paid attention to some forgotten composers of the 15th century. One of them is Guillaume Faugues. As so often there is quite a difference between his reputation in his own time and in modern times. It is very likely nothing of his oeuvre has ever been recorded before.
Johannes Ockeghem is one of the most famous composers of the renaissance and belongs to the most prominent representatives of the Franco-Flemish school. Despite his high reputation during his lifetime we know very little about him. Even the exact year of his birth is still not established. He was at the service of Charles, Duke of Bourbon, and later he became a member of the French royal chapel. His fame is documented by the various laments in both text and music which were written on his death in 1497. As one of the very few composers from the Franco-Flemish school he has never worked in Italy, and this has consequences for the performance practice.