Ring Out
L'album
Prima registrazione mondiale di composizioni originali della violista e compositrice Jessica Meyer, la cui musica The Strad ha definito "fierce and lyrical". Al centro del disco c'è "Seasons of Basho", un intenso ciclo di canzoni in quattro movimenti sui versi del maestro dell'haiku Matsuo Bashō per controtenore, viola e pianoforte, in cui la voce straordinaria di Nicholas Tamagna esplora, stagione dopo stagione, la scoperta, il desiderio, la perdita e la solitudine. L'album si chiude con il brano che gli dà il titolo, "Ring Out, Wild Bells", registrato all'interno di The Tank, una vecchia cisterna d'acqua del Colorado trasformata in una sala dalla risonanza straordinaria, con l'ensemble vocale Roomful of Teeth, vincitore di un Grammy. Debutto al n. 1 della classifica Billboard Traditional Classical.
Stampa
"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."