Conductor Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L'Arpeggiata have made several recordings in which the improvisational bases of jazz and Baroque music are brought together. The ideas go back as far as the Modern Jazz Quartet's recordings of the 1950s, and Pluhar, on solid ground, has attracted plenty of critical attention and strong sales. Handel Goes Wild, as the title suggests, goes farther into the unknown. Pluhar asserts that the title refers to Handel's choleric personality, but it is also she who goes wild; the album's ...
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Conductor Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L'Arpeggiata have made several recordings in which the improvisational bases of jazz and Baroque music are brought together. The ideas go back as far as the Modern Jazz Quartet's recordings of the 1950s, and Pluhar, on solid ground, has attracted plenty of critical attention and strong sales. Handel Goes Wild, as the title suggests, goes farther into the unknown. Pluhar asserts that the title refers to Handel's choleric personality, but it is also she who goes wild; the album's subtitle is "Improvisations on G.F. Handel," but it might be more accurate to say that Handel serves here as raw melodic material for further creative activity. Soprano Núria Rial and countertenor Valer Sabadus roll with whatever L'Arpeggiata throws at them, and there's nothing dull about the proceedings at all: the playing is not like the MJQ's, with its regular jazz rhythms substituted for Baroque pulses, but instead shifts freely between pieces and within a single aria. There is...
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