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Arcangelo Corelli, Giulio Caccini, Maurizio Cazzati, Carlo Farina, G.B. Granata, Johann Caspar Horn
Milos Valent v/va, Erin Headley viola da gamba/lirone, Maxine Eilander harps, Stephen Stubbs chitarrone/lute/baroque guitar
L’ensemble Teatro Lirico de l’Américain Stubbs interprète de la musique instrumentale extravagante du XVIIème siècle. Les variations écrites ou improvisées de La Folia servent de fil conducteur à l’auditeur sur cet enregistrement. Elles relient méditations intérieures, monologues furtifs et ariosos lyriques. Une pratique musicale baroque et un art d’improvisation personnel, mâtinés de jazz-rock et de musique folklorique, mènent à un assemblage raffiné de tempéraments différents.
Stephen Stubbs has put together a risky but irresistible project of a kind that has lately become standard operating procedure at ECM. Instead of a traditional early-music program Mr. Stubbs and his period-instrument chamber band, Teatro Lirico, offer an extended fantasy built on musical free association. Though the program is essentially Italian, it ends with dances from a 17th-century Slovak manuscript and a guitar piece by Mr. Stubbs. Amid all this, Mr. Stubbs and company offer two imaginative deftly played improvisations on “Folias d’Espagnas”, a chord progression on which many Baroque works are built… But the improvisatory spirit is not confined to these: the players take every opportunity to embellish the formal works as well. The playing is tight and shapely. In the improvised pieces, the musicians work together with the unity of purpose a listener expects of a good jazz ensemble.
Allan Kozinn, The New York Times
Stephen Stubbs