Ring Out
Über das Album
Eine Weltersteinspielung von Werken der Bratschistin und Komponistin Jessica Meyer, deren Musik The Strad "fierce and lyrical" nannte. Im Mittelpunkt steht „Seasons of Basho“, ein eindringlicher Liederzyklus in vier Sätzen auf Verse des Haiku-Meisters Matsuo Bashō für Countertenor, Viola und Klavier, in dem Nicholas Tamagnas außergewöhnliche Stimme durch die Jahreszeiten Entdeckung, Sehnsucht, Verlust und Einsamkeit erkundet. Den Abschluss bildet das Titelstück „Ring Out, Wild Bells“, aufgenommen in The Tank, einem stillgelegten Wassertank in Colorado, der heute ein Ort für Musik mit großem Nachhall ist, mit dem Grammy-prämierten Vokalensemble Roomful of Teeth. Eingestiegen auf Platz 1 der Billboard Traditional Classical Charts.
Presse
"Pianist Adam Marks plays a solitary note to open Seasons of Basho, answered by shuddering scraps of melody from Meyer’s viola. Marks’s piano and the extraordinary countertenor voice of Nicholas Tamagna announce that “Spring” has sprung, along with tears of loneliness. “Summer” consists mostly of a shuffling viola solo, sonic dry heat; when the piano burbles to life, Tamagna speaks. The singer’s beautiful vibrato and remarkable timbre at high pitch make his reading of “Autumn,” a soaring slow movement, glow. Marks’s piano becomes a bell, tolling in and then, wonderfully, out of sync."
"In Seasons of Basho, countertenor Nicholas Tamagna mesmerises Meyer and pianist Adam Marks with moments of golden silence among his unwaveringly lovely sweet tones, using the cyclical changing of the year as a metaphor for the highs and lows of obsessive love."
"Seasons of Basho is a four-song cycle for countertenor (the excellent Nicholas Tamagna), viola (Meyer), and piano (Adam Marks). The four poems – Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter – are set to texts by the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō that examine the ups and downs of love and all its vicissitudes."
"Throughout the work, Meyer and pianist Marks draw bold emotional arcs, but it's the ultra-expressive singing of Tamagna that makes the strongest mark. His is anything but a polite, genteel performance."