Handel's cantatas represent an important musical repertoire that until recently has been little known. Consisting of about 100 separate works, most were written over a period of a few years for private performance in Italy. They range from musical miniatures containing only two arias connected by recitative and accompanied by continuo (a bass line typically realized by cello and harpsichord) to larger works with named characters, a dramatic story, and rich instrumental forces. Telling more often than not about the pangs of love, these are intimate works, with texts frequently written by (and sometimes about) members of the privileged audience for which they were composed. A number of Handel's cantatas have texts by one of his important Italian patrons, Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj. The project of Marco Vitale to record all of Handel's cantatas is thrilling. The continuo cantatas have never been recorded in full and many have never been recorded at all. Thus, this project will bring to life largely unknown music by one of the world's greatest composers.

The songs included in this album come from diverse origins, united by the subtle narrative, poetic and musical threads all common to the Spanish repertoire. Pieces of literary traditions from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries are intermingled with others belonging to folklore, all of them taken from non-Spanish sources, and organized into five thematic groups, alternating between each other as if they were refined panels in a Renaissance altarpiece. Engaging with this music involves entering a singularly vast field, rich with centuries old intersections, borrowings and appropriations between cultures; a natural occurrence, considering the identity of the old American colonial territories and their population- their complex and mixed nature. Through this program, the artist aims to expose the varied processes of appropriation and transculturation, especially significant to the Latin American colonial repertoire, informed by the interpretive tradition that Jonatan Alvarado inherited and built between the spheres of the popular and the academic.

Classical Music

The path that all interested listeners are about to follow leads to the deep and as yet not fully explored woodlands of the instrumental music of the latter half of the fifteenth century in or around southern Germany. It will zig-zag from one repertoire to another, from one manuscript to another, and of course from one ‘soundscape’ to another by presenting different combinations of instruments, in dialogue or simply allowing some of them stand alone to speak for themselves so that at the end of their sonic journey, listeners can fully enjoy a panoramic view of this rich and fascinating tradition.

Gorzanis' "Libro de intabolatura de liuto" (1567) is the first known case of music composed on every semitone of the octave. It is a cycle of 48 dances which explores all the fingerboard, using Renaissance modes and simple cadenza and diminution formulas. This album, conceived as a sound image of the manuscript, is recorded for the first time in it's entirety and it retains the exact order of the songs. Michele Carreca was born in Foggia and graduated in lute at "Conservatorio Santa Cecilia" in Rome with Andrea Damiani in 2006. He attended master classes held by Paul O'Dette and in particular by Hopkinson Smith, which has been a main point of reference for his studies. He has made recordings both as a soloist and as a continuo performer for Deutsche Grammophon, Sony-DHM, BrilliantClassics, Classic Voice-Antiqua, Continuo Records, Ipsar, Rai Trade, Urania Records.

The ensemble Scaramuccia began in 2013, thanks to violinist Javier Lupiáñez's quest to rediscover the lesser-known baroque repertoire. Scaramuccia's purpose is to bring back to life the repertoire of which one could listen not only in the most refined circles, but also in the taverns and on the streets of the baroque past. Along with Vivaldi, this release features Prete Rosso's recently-rediscovered works. This recording is aiming to be part of the new history, featuring these recently discovered works.