BALTIMORE CONSORT’s SHAKESPEAREAN MUSIC -Best 2019

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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Listening to the Baltimore Consort’s CD The Food of Love (Sono Luminus DSL-92234) made me feel musically deprived by the absence of any similarly accomplished ensemble dedicated to Early Music near our vicinity.

The consolation comes for me by listening to The Food of Love, a treasure trove of Elizabethan music performed by six superb specialists on an array of exotic instruments that include treble and bass viols, cittern, recorders, crumhorn, fifes, and bagpipes, in addition to the more familiar lute and flute.

The players are Mary Anne Ballard, Mark Cudek, Larry Lipkis, Ronn McFarlane. Mindy Rosenfeld, and soprano Danielle Svonavec. All six of these artists brilliantly bring to life the music of several contemporaries of Shakespeare, notably Thomas Morley, Richard Edwards, Robert Jones, Robert Johnson, attached to Shakespeare’s The King’s Men as composer in residence,  Anthony Holborne, and John Dowland.

The music is richly varied, with a number of familiar tunes revisited: It was a Lover and his Lass… O Mistress Mine… Bonny Sweet Robin… Greensleeves…Where the Bee Sucks…Willow Song… The less familiar but eminently accessible includes among other lively instrumentals: Heart’s Ease… The Buffens… and Kemp’s Jig, the tune that actor Will Kemp famously and uninterruptedly danced to for one hundred miles between London and Norwich.

Here’s a short sampler of the Baltimore Consort’s music-making: Tarleton’s Jig – https://youtu.be/G49NMFIK-2Y

Melancholy turns abound as in My Lady Carey’s Dompe, a charmer that hints in 1525 at the early arrival of the Baroque over half a century away.

Then one encounters early examples of incidental music such as the haunting Fortune my Foe that Shakespeare must have used to underpin key moments in his tragedies and comedies, in addition to the familiarly ubiquitous dance interludes and songs.

The presence of bouncy syncopation in Hollborne’s 1599 instrumental dance Fairie Rownde is both amusing and nothing short of surprising, belying the false conceit that much Elizabethan music is all laidback sameness. Far from it, this gem of an album played with Historical Performance accuracy and 21st century pizzazz is a revealing and often toe-tapping thing to treasure.

Kudos to Mark Cudek and Larry Lipkis for the scholarly and insightful booklet notes. The engineering by Daniel Shores and the producing by Dan Merceruio help place the Sono Luminus release of the Baltimore Consort’s CD The Food of Love at the very top of my list of 2019 favorites.

Rafael de Acha        http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”