{"id":7156,"date":"2015-02-03T05:30:46","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T10:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=7156"},"modified":"2015-02-03T05:30:46","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T10:30:46","slug":"album-review-ja-garbarek-and-the-hilliard-ensemble-officium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/03\/album-review-ja-garbarek-and-the-hilliard-ensemble-officium\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble &#8212; Officium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/garbarek_officium.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" hspace=\"20\" vspace=\"20\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This double-album \u2013 originally released in 1994 \u2013 is a transcendent, compelling work that combines jazz with choral\/classical music. Featuring vocals sung in Latin by <strong>The Hilliard Ensemble<\/strong> (countertenor <strong>David James<\/strong>, tenor <strong>Rogers Covey-Crump<\/strong>, tenor <strong>John Potter<\/strong>, and baritone <strong>Gordon Jones<\/strong>), <em>Officium<\/em> is nearly an all-vocal album. But the haunting saxophone work of <strong>Jan Garbarek<\/strong> (on soprano and tenor saxes) adds a dimension to these performances that takes them well beyond the realm of devotional choral performances.<\/p>\n<p>The performance was recorded in an Austrian monastery, and the result certainly sounds like it. It&#8217;s unlikely that the ambience captured by producer (and ECM head) <strong>Manfred Eichler<\/strong> could have been captured in any conventional recording studio, no matter how high quality. The echo-against-stone aural texture gives Garbarek&#8217;s tenor a yawning quality that sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish from a cello. In fact, the Norwegian saxophonist&#8217;s instrument effectively becomes a fifth voice, blending as he does into the vocal milieu of the Ensemble.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"float: right; padding: 10px; width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B00M4CA9FI&#038;asins=B00M4CA9FI&#038;linkId=ZAEVV7CPSXGIGD25&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This initial collaboration between Garbarek and the vocal quartet was so successful that they mounted a series of tours, and followed up the release of <em>Officium<\/em> with further recorded cooperative efforts. <em>Officium<\/em> may well have been the inspiration for the release of <em>Chant<\/em>, the album of Gregorian chants featuring the <strong>Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos<\/strong>, also released in 1994. There&#8217;s little doubt that <em>Officium<\/em> \u2013 the more modern and sophisticated work of the two \u2013 helped renew interest in the musical form of the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n<p>In the expansive booklet that accompanies this 2LP reissue, Eichler comments on the genesis of the session, noting that the idea came to him initially as potential accompaniment to a movie he had planned to make in Iceland. The music of 16<sup>th<\/sup> century composer <strong>Christ\u00f3bal de Morales<\/strong> (which figures largely in <span style=\"color: #222222;\"><em>Officium<\/em>) so moved Eichler, though, that in the end, as he writes in the booklet, \u201cNo longer able to reconcile the intensity of the sounds with the figure of Geiser [the film&#8217;s central character], I later decided on other music [for the film]. The vision remained. And now this recording.\u201d Potter adds, \u201cWhat is this music? We don&#8217;t have a name for it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The libretto includes all of the Latin lyrics to <em>Officium<\/em>&#8216;s fifteen tracks, but no English translation is provided. That notwithstanding, the power and the majesty of the performances transcends words and, perhaps, meaning.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/the_musoscribe\">Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/icon_twitter_small.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"18\" height=\"18\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"1\" vspace=\"0\" \/> Twitter<\/a> and get notified<br \/>\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This double-album \u2013 originally released in 1994 \u2013 is a transcendent, compelling work that combines jazz with choral\/classical music. Featuring vocals sung in Latin by The Hilliard Ensemble (countertenor David [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,42,64,65,73],"tags":[746,999,1099],"class_list":["post-7156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classical","category-jazz","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-ecm","tag-hilliard-ensemble","tag-jan-garbarek","cat-17-id","cat-42-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}