Jazz pianist Jason Rebello and English vocal ensemble Opus Anglicanum join forces on their album Adorna, releasing on 28 January 2022 (UA210140). The track bearing the album's title name was pre-released as a single on 31 December 2021.
Adorna - single - released on 31 December 2021. Click above download on iTunes.
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Candlemas is the winter day that all the Church’s candles for the year were blessed, and in pre-Christian times, was a festival of the first stirring of spring. In Adorna, ancient monastic chants, sung annually through the centuries in cathedrals and abbeys to mark this feast, are transformed to give a new interpretation of light dispelling darkness. Stephen Burrows, alto David de Winter, tenor John Bowen, tenor Roland Robertson, baritone James Birchall, bass Jason Rebello, piano Recorded live in concert in Turner Sims Southampton, University of Southampton, 2020 |
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Jason Rebello and Opus Anglicanum started their professional career recording and performing in the late 1980s. Opus Anglicanum's world – which embraces a cappella Renaissance polyphony and Gregorian chant, folksong, music hall, contemporary classical vocal commissions and readings from literature and poetry, in fact almost everything but jazz - remained totally different from Jason's. Their home has remained great cathedrals, abbeys, stately homes, or tiny mediaeval parish churches. Then their director Roland Robertson booked Jason to compose major instrumental and choral work, and so came to understand the spiritual richness and artistic breadth of Jason's musicianship.
It was obviously immediately that Jason and Opus Anglicanum shared a common goal: to explore together a mysterious, austere and magical zone, following the ancient paths of ritual and procession, in modes ancient and modern, the piano illuminating and complementing the voices, and exploiting the space. Together, with barless scores of square mediaeval notes, and tracts of Latin, they began to experiment. This developed into a concert programme built on chants for the winter feast of Candlemas, first performed in Wells Cathedral. Standing around the nave, empty but for Jason at the Steinway, with five singers in fading January light, the content and setting 'clicked' perfectly. The result is 'Adorna', now enhanced by two original new compositions by Jason, and recorded in live performance.
It was obviously immediately that Jason and Opus Anglicanum shared a common goal: to explore together a mysterious, austere and magical zone, following the ancient paths of ritual and procession, in modes ancient and modern, the piano illuminating and complementing the voices, and exploiting the space. Together, with barless scores of square mediaeval notes, and tracts of Latin, they began to experiment. This developed into a concert programme built on chants for the winter feast of Candlemas, first performed in Wells Cathedral. Standing around the nave, empty but for Jason at the Steinway, with five singers in fading January light, the content and setting 'clicked' perfectly. The result is 'Adorna', now enhanced by two original new compositions by Jason, and recorded in live performance.
LIVE PERFORMANCES
WELLS CATHEDRAL: SATURDAY 22 JANUARY, 7PM
ST MARTIN'S-IN-THE-FIELDS, LONDON: THURSDAY 3 FEBRUARY, 7PM
The St Martin's-in-the-Fields concert is followed by a Crypt Late jazz performance by Jason Rebello and His Trio - Troy Miller, drums and Orlando Le Fleming, bass.
WELLS CATHEDRAL: SATURDAY 22 JANUARY, 7PM
ST MARTIN'S-IN-THE-FIELDS, LONDON: THURSDAY 3 FEBRUARY, 7PM
The St Martin's-in-the-Fields concert is followed by a Crypt Late jazz performance by Jason Rebello and His Trio - Troy Miller, drums and Orlando Le Fleming, bass.
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Adorna on Apple Music's New in Classical playlist
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Adorna - album - releasing on 28 January 2022
