Songes et Mençonges:
Medieval visions and dreams of prophecy, love and folly
Songes et Mençonges: Dreams and Deceptions
The Boston Camerata Anne Azéma, voice, hurdy gurdy, harp, direction Shira Kammen, vielle, harp Timothy Leigh Evans, Michael Barrett, John Taylor Ward, voice
Medieval dreams, and even madness and folly, are frequently evoked in medieval music and poetry. Listening, we enter, via the delirium and desires of love, or the intimations of social decay, into a kind of dark transcendance. But these apparitions may also point upwards, serving as prelude to some heroic action, via the nighttime visions of kings and heroes. And they may also lead to a higher spiritual plane, via exalting, mystical epiphanies.Anne Azéma, understands how to give to her songs the tragic intensity and dramatic power that are too often missing from academic recreations of medieval music.- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Magic sensuality. It may well alter the way we look at the Middle Ages. - The Boston Globe