This delightful recording contains many of your favorite hymns, carols, and songs that will help cheer your heart and your home. Blending secular and sacred music, Christmas in the City presents an hour of the beautiful sounds of the Christmas season. Listeners will be captivated by the brilliant reverberation of handbells and handchimes performed by the skillful and talented ringers of Chicago Bronze.
Roberts's new recording, Science of Love, finds the longtime stalwart of the creative Downtown music scene returning to New York City, after raising a family in Ithaca, NY, in an effort to rekindle the vital, creative energy that only the metropolis can provide. Roberts discovered inspiration in droves, which allowed him to create a unique program of original music unlike anything he had done in the past. // Of course, Roberts has been well known for playing alongside music greats, like Bill Frisell, Tim Berne, and Joey Baron. He has also put together singular and celebrated ensembles of his own that cover a wealth of musical ground, including folk, rock, modern classical, gospel, and world music influences.
Suor Leonora d'Este (1515-1575), Lucrezia Borgia's daughter, was a princess, a nun, and a musician. She left little to illuminate her history, but an obscure book of motets may at least help us understand her musical life: the Musica quinque vocum motteta materna lingua vocata, published in Venice in 1543. The book is anonymous, but it contains clues to its origins that lead us to the door of Leonora d'Este's home, the convent of Corpus Domini in Ferrara, perhaps even suggesting that she was its unidentified composer. The music here is the earliest published polyphony for nuns. This recording by Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens allows it to be heard for the first time through carefully researched performances.
