R.I.P. Erato (d. 2001)

But it was sad to have witnessed and lived through such a decline nonetheless.

We do have many fond memories of the "good" years with Erato, the many marvelous musical projects brought unto being by intense collective effort, and the personal bonds thus forged. We wish our friends and colleagues there all the best as they face an uncertain future.

Our main concern, and perhaps yours, is the future of Camerata's many recordings on that label. The major part of our recorded work over the last 15 years was done with Erato, and we are anxious to keep those programs available and in circulation. We have continued to list everything on our discography page, and will do our best to keep everything possible in stock. Stay tuned for further news!

-- Joel Cohen and the Camerata staff

We were aided in this project by the Youth Pro Musica under the direction of Hazel Somerville, and we have to admit that the kids nearly stole the show. They brought the house down with a nimble and dancelike Machaut virelai.

• February: The University of Chicago greet us, and the Shakers, with cheers and ovation. We perform the Roman de Fauvel, a medieval French satire, for enthusiastic audiences in the Netherlands.
• March: Anne Azéma charms them in Boston with Provence Mystique, and we swing through the South with Liberty Tree.
• April: Joel Cohen receives the coveted Edison Award in Amsterdam, sharing the honor with friend and colleague Mohammed Briouel of Fez, Morocco. We mourn the death of dear friend Robert J. Lurtsema.
• June: We return to Sabbathday Lake, Maine, to make a new recording with the Shakers, and spend a beautiful week there of music making and fellowship.
• July: The Cantigas make their début in Brittany, as Moroccans and Europeans perform together in an extraordinary, 10th century Carolingian church.
• August: The Cantigas production is featured at the Utrecht Festival, Netherlands, and is broadcast live, nationwide, by German radio.
• September: Students of seven nationalities come together in Coaraze, France. for our fourth annual summer workshop of medieval song. Liberty Tree is a highlight of the Kassel (Germany) Music Festival.
• November: Carmina Burana tours nationally, and every night baritone Donny Wilkinson looses his jacket in an onstage crapshoot.
• December: Our recording with the Shakers, The Golden Harvest, appears in the stores and receives a warm welcome. A feature story on the new recording runs on National Public Radio, and the Boston Globe picks the CD as one of the outstanding recordings of the year.

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  The Golden Harvest

  

  The most recent fruits of our work with the Shaker family of Sabbathday Lake, Maine, are now available on a new CD, The Golden Harvest, on the Glissando label. We hope you'll run out to buy the album, which contains magnificent music -- you can even obtain it directly from us by sending a query to bcamerata@aol.com.

  A Week with the Shakers

  Sabbathday Lake, Maine (about half an hour north and west of Portland) is home to the world's last functioning Shaker community. Despite that solitary-sounding description, Chosen Land is a vital, cheerful, and active place -- you really ought to drop by for a visit! The six Shakers who reside there are good and cherished friends and collaborators. We made our award winning Simple Gifts CD on location there in 1994, and last June we returned to the Shaker village to share a week of communal life with our friends, and to record a new program of superb, beautiful, and mainly unpublished Shaker songs.

  The rehearsals and recording sessions extended over a period of six days. Performing forces included the soloists of the Boston Camerata, the Shakers, the Harvard University Choir, and the Youth Pro Musica -- over forty singers all in all. We sang our hearts out, ate like royalty at the Shakers' generous table, enjoyed the marvelous environment, and came away inspired by the place, its music, and its people.

  The recording will be released in October on the Glissando label, under the title The Golden Harvest. Much of the music will be made available for the very first time ever outside of the Shaker communty and its archive. We expect that there will be heavy demand for this CD.

  The Cantigas win a Major International Prize

  

  If you follow this website regularly, you have been reading at regular intervals about our great adventure with the medieval Cantigas of King Alfonso el Sabio . You probably know that our recording was made in Fez, Morocco, with a unique mix of European and Arabic musicians, and that the initial reviews following the CD's release last fall were most enthusiastic.

  Here is our latest news: the Cantigas CD has just won one of the greatest honors of the classical music world, Holland's Edison Prize. Other winners of the award this year included Cecelia Bartoli and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. We accepted this honor at a televised ceremony in Amsterdam in early April, and some of the original cast musicians gave the audience a little live music in lieu of a thank you note.

  The award was presented to ensemble directors Joel Cohen and Mohammed Briouel by the Moroccan Ambassador to the Netherlands, who praised our work in his speech as an oustanding example of friendly and fruitful collaboration among people of different backgrounds.

  The photo, left, was taken just after the ceremony. The musicians you see are (standing, left to right:) Mohammed Briouel (holding the statue), Joel Cohen, and Aziz Amri; seated, left to right: Equidad Bares, Francoise Atlan, and Hayet Ayad. All of us in the CD cast are touched by this award and grateful for the honor

  Cantigas: A Listener's Review

  (reproduced from the amazon.com website)

  Alfonso's/Cohen's Cantigas
  March 2, 2000
  Reviewer: Jessica Knauss from Leeds, England

  This is one of the finest performances I have heard of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. By focusing on the "loores" (every tenth cantiga, Alfonso's personal praises of the Virgin Mary) the disc takes on a very personal tone, and by the end, the listener is inside the mind of Alfonso X. The choices of instruments and when to use them (or not to use them) is extremely judicious, and the playing and singing is very fine. The pronunciation of the Galician is also excellent, and none of the songs are cut in order to shorten the performance time. Though the influence of eastern music on the Cantigas is very controversial, its deliberate use here, in the microtones and rhythmic patterns, is extremely effective and gives the whole disc an atmosphere of authenticity not many have. On top of all that, it is a very "listenable" disc (unless you absolutely can't stand these eastern influences). The juxtaposition of a song in Arabic with "A Santa Maria dadas" is shocking, but again, effective. These kinds of educated guesses are the closest we will get to hearing what the Cantigas have to tell us, and this disc seems to be not far off the mark.

  A visit with an old friend

  On his January swing through Europe, Camerata director Joel Cohen paid a call to the great Swiss tenor Hugues Cuénod, at the singer's home in Vevey. Joel sends us this photo as a memento of that visit. Quoth Cohen: "Cuénod, at age 97, is still a master of gossip and anecdote. He also serves a mean glass of sherry (or two)." Among other things, the pair reminisced about their 1971 LP recording of John Dowland songs, made in collaboration with the late Swiss harpsichordist Christiane Jaccottet. A possible reissue of that classic session is under consideration.

  Andrea von Ramm

  

  Our beloved friend and mentor Andrea von Ramm died suddenly in Munich last November. Her disappearance leaves a hole in the conter of our very being. And we will write a longer essay about her once our spirits are a little higher. The image you see was taken during rehearsals for Andrea's last appearance with us, the Tristan we gave in Graz, Austria in June, 1999. This is the Andrea we will always remember: gossiping on a cell phone as she cradles a medieval organetto, full of contradiction, full of life and spunk.

  What an incredible privilege to have known her, for more than twenty-five years of meals, jokes, speculations, arguments, and musical collaborations. And what a fantastic legacy of song and performance she leaves behind. There is noone like her, she can never be replaced, but she can at least inspire us as we try to measure up to the standards she set.

  -- Joel Cohen