August 4, 2004
Hellenic News of America
Cappella Romana's next recording (its sixth) represents a signficant leap forward for the ensemble. From August 6 through 11, Dr. Alexander Lingas will conduct Cappella Romana to record a new CD called "Music for the Fall of Constantinople."
Producing will be Steve Barnett, Grammy-award winning producer of recordings by such ensembles as Anonymous 4, The Swingle Singers, Washington Bach Consort, and the Newberry Consort. He has also produced many recordings for Chanticleer (including their Grammy-award winning recordings "Colors of Love" and John Tavener's "Lamentations and Praises"), the Dale Warland Singers (including their two-time Grammy-nominated recordings), and the Peabody-award winning chamber music program "Saint Paul's Sunday," distributed by Public Radio International.
"Music for the Fall of Constantinople" is a virtuosic program of 14th- and 15th-century musical works that bears witness to the co-existence and conflict between Greek and Western cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean during the twilight years of Byzantium. This is the same program presented on tour in 2004 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Yale University, Princeton University, the Bloomington Early Music Festival (Indiana), and the Holy Trinity Cultural Series in Indianapolis. The program will be presented again in November at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Major support for this recording comes from the A. G. Leventis Foundation (London, UK) as the first part of a project called "Musical Relations Between the Orthodox East and the Latin West." (The second part of this grant will fund a CD of medieval Byzantine chant to be recorded in January 2005). Additional major support for this project comes from the National Forum of Greek Orthodox Church Musicians as a part of their educational initiatives to provide quality resources on the history and development of Byzantine music, and from individual donors.
Posted by acapnews at August 4, 2004 7:01 AM
