Azahar

« My vocal writing tries to set free the voice, as in trying to reconnect it with its primal states found in African musics, in flamenco singing, or in some central European musics. [...] In my opinion, the voice holds the key to everything that is going to happen now in music, because it has access to every form of sound, and it’s this very sound that brings us into a new musical adventure. » (Maurice Ohana)

This program confronts and mixes de Machaut’s medieval polyphony to the poetry of the Spanish Cantigas and to the works of Stravinsky and Ohana. Stravinsky wrote his Mass after discovering de Machaut’s, and concerning Ohana, his Cantigas of Santa Maria take inspiration from the Cantigas of Alphonse le Sage et to de Machaut’s Mass. There is an extraordinary creative freedom to be taken with the interpretation of de Machaut’s famous Mass. All the works of this program are connected by a formidable unity, even though they were written at different times of occidental music’s history. No other works sound quite like them, not even the ones of their respective authors!