With her viola da gamba, she grounds the music by improvising plucked, strummed or bowed underpinning for the guitar’s higher-pitched accompaniments. Mary Anne Ballard, the bass line player, brings knowledge of music history and of the parallels between written music of earlier periods and the heritage of oral tradition, along with her years of experience in creating programs, and with childhood memories of Appalachian folk singing, another oral tradition. He also brings cohesion and forward motion to the pieces, with an almost vaudevillian instinct for reaching audiences, and an unerring sense of Affekt. Steve Rosenberg, musical polymath, plays winds and guitars, a magic box of musical wonders. Danny Mallon, percussion meister, who is equally at home with jazz, pop, and classical music, is a one-man band playing the doumbek, an ancient Middle Eastern ceramic hour-glass shaped drum, the Brazilian caxixi (a basket with seeds), castanets, wood block, frame drum, and Egyptian riq. José sings out like a bird whose song issues forth spontaneously. There is the Latin spirit of José Lemos, who grew up in Brazil and Uruguay, and whose native languages parallel the Sephardic Ladino, a variant of Spanish. The members of the Sephardic quartet Brio have come together once again to craft a magical collection of reinvented and refreshed ancient folk music in Sol y Luna, the latest release from Sono Luminus.īrio’s performance of Sephardic music is a convergence of elements: its instruments as well as the musical personalities and backgrounds of its performers.
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