As Advent nears its finish and we prepare to celebrate the Nativity, we have a rather charming Protestant offering from Blacknall Arts which wouldn’t sound out of place to Fairport Convention fans.
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Turkish-American composer Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol directs Schola Cantorum, Ensemble Trinitas, The New England Mehterhane and five different DÜNYA ensembles in a sumptuous history of Istanbul/Constantinople via music from the Byzantine and Ottoman periods.
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In honor of Catholic and Protestant Good Friday, we won’t be posting today. Instead, we leave you today with appropriate music by an absolute legend, Johnny Cash.
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The York Waits are a group out of York, England (no surprise there, right?), who specialize in Renaissance music from the 14th Century. This album is a reissue of a 1996 album where they paired with vocalist Deborah Catterall, who, 25 years after the release of this disc, served as Choral Director at Higham Hall, Cumbria and Voice Teacher at the Royal Northern College of Music before embarking on a private career. The music is not badly recorded – perhaps a bit compressed for choral music, and not as bright as it could be, but otherwise, the tunes are well-played…
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In times of deep anguish, I’ve relied on the hymnody of the Orthodox Church to find peace. It is where I place my faith, and it has never failed me once. A lot of that comes from my devotion to the chanting I hear in the choirs. Archbishop Samuel David was a Syrian-born priest who rose through the ranks in the Russian Orthodox Church and was a lightning-rod of controversy during his day, being excommunicated by the Antiochian Orthodox Church, his home diocese, before being received once again and made archbishop. Canary Records does it’s usual sterling job of restoring…