Longtime Boston Camerata fans may recall the group's 1974 album A Medieval Christmas, with longtime director Joel Cohen, and wonder about the connection with the present release, bearing "A Medieval Christmas" as a subtitle. The new album features director/singer Anne Azéma, who sang on the earlier program under Cohen. In the words of the present performers, the earlier program was "re-imagined, augmented, and re-evaluated" but is "with its pluri-disciplinarity and diversity of sources, still close to the original in its ...
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Longtime Boston Camerata fans may recall the group's 1974 album A Medieval Christmas, with longtime director Joel Cohen, and wonder about the connection with the present release, bearing "A Medieval Christmas" as a subtitle. The new album features director/singer Anne Azéma, who sang on the earlier program under Cohen. In the words of the present performers, the earlier program was "re-imagined, augmented, and re-evaluated" but is "with its pluri-disciplinarity and diversity of sources, still close to the original in its underlying spirit." There are even several pieces in common between the two. Both albums mix plainchant, early polyphony, and instrumental pieces on Christmas themes, but there are several new aspects. Azéma focuses the music more closely on the progressive stylistic hotspots of the Middle Ages: Aquitaine in southwestern France and the Spanish kingdom. There are still pieces from other regions, but there's a strong sense of how the music of the period grew in expressiveness. That...
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