In a remarkable find, cellist Elinor Frey and her Accademia de' Dissonanti introduce the chamber music of Jean Baur, known as a pioneering harpist in the later 18th c. and a composer of great elegance and charm. They offer sonatas (solo or with continuo) for cello and for harp ..read more

In a revealing look into the lives of 'ordinary' folks in 17th and 18th c. Germany, author Tanya Kevorkian taps a wealth of sources that detail city life, from religious beliefs to weddings to the rhythms and rules of town watchmen. With compassion and wisdom, the author notes that historians who look at street life "have to some degree replicated the perspective of the authorities ..read more

Emily Zazulia's valuable 'Where Sight Meets Sound: the Poetics of Late-Medieval Music Writing' explores notational aesthetics in polyphonic music, where it's not obvious how you're meant to sing what's on the page ..read more

Long undervalued, Alessando Scarlatti's vocal writing naturally weds singable lines with the Italian language. Ars Lyrica Houston's colorful new recording of a Scarlatti oratorio, with an outstanding cast, makes a brilliant case for this rarely heard music ..read more

Chamber ensemble AGAVE's latest album, with the versatile voice of soprano Michele Kennedy, crisscrosses the Atlantic and spans several centuries. The focus is on women composers from the 17th through 20th centuries. Carefully planned, beautifully paced, this album forges connections deeper than the composers' shared womanhood ..read more

Using church records, Robert Nosow's fascinating, richly detailed book portrays Jacob Obrecht at St. Donatian in Bruges, and the church singers he composed for. The choristers were deeply embedded in the city's civic life, and records show some were disciplined for mockery or being 'extremely lazy, disobedient, and wholly incapable ..read more

In 2016, Jordi Savall assembled a group of immigrant musicians with a fundamental mission: to preserve and revive precious musical traditions from a range of under-stress cultures, from Syrian and Kurdish to Armenian, Sudanese, Afghan, and Moroccan. The resulting live performance was captured as 'Oriente Lux,' bridging gaps and making connections ..read more

'Myths Contested,' the Washington Bach Consort's new recording, pairs Bach at his most theatrical and humorous with new music. Trevor Weston's evocative cantata 'A New Song' deserves its own place in a concert setting — and not just alongside Bach performed with period instruments ..read more

Jeannette Sorrell's adaptation of Handel's popular 'Israel in Egypt' cuts, re-orders, restores, and replaces music and text throughout the oratorio. But Handel didn't leave us with a 'definitive' edition, and Sorrell's version is so artistically logical that someone new to the work might not know anything is missing. Apollo's Fire and the outstanding vocal and instrumental soloists make a compelling case ..read more

In the 1570s, Venice was devastated by the plague, losing a third of its population. The latest compelling album from the celebrated Concerto Palatino and cornettist Bruce Dickey explores a spiritual sound world from this time of grief and penitence ..read more