Ring Out
L'album
Premier enregistrement mondial d'œuvres originales de l'altiste et compositrice Jessica Meyer, dont The Strad a qualifié la musique de "fierce and lyrical". Au cœur de l'album, « Seasons of Basho », un cycle de mélodies envoûtant en quatre mouvements sur des vers du maître du haïku Matsuo Bashō, pour contre-ténor, alto et piano, où la voix extraordinaire de Nicholas Tamagna explore, au fil des saisons, la découverte, le désir, la perte et la solitude. L'album culmine avec le titre éponyme « Ring Out, Wild Bells », enregistré dans The Tank, un ancien réservoir d'eau du Colorado devenu un lieu de musique à la résonance exceptionnelle, avec l'ensemble vocal Roomful of Teeth, lauréat d'un Grammy. Entré à la première place du classement Billboard Traditional Classical.
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."