Marias - Submarine - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Reiter Quartet / Various - Pick Up [COMPACT DISCS] date 12/26/2012

Acclaimed alternative-pop band The Marías released their eagerly awaited debut album CINEMA, on June 25th via Nice Life Recording Company/Atlantic Records. CINEMA was written and produced entirely by Zardoya and her partner - producer and multi-instrumentalist Josh Conway - within their LA apartment. The duo is joined by their closest friends Jesse Perlman (guitar) and Edward James (keys) to round out the band. CINEMA features tracks in both English and Spanish, when dreaming up their first full-length, Zardoya and Conway mined inspiration from such hyper-imaginative filmmakers as Pedro Almodóvar and Wes Anderson, achieving an untamed emotionality that acutely amplifies the most intimate of feelings. In addition to those influential classic films, the album's title also pays homage to the work María and Josh first collaborated on - creating music for film + television scores. (In a nod to the bilingualism of their work, the title CINEMA carries the same meaning in both English and Spanish).

Within this new album the Armonia delle Sfere ensemble is delivering to us the complete Produzioni Armoniche work by Antonia Bembo, a collection of 41 motets dedicated in 1701 to Louis XIV, in whose court she landed after a series of vicissitudes occurred in Venice, her hometown, including the failure of a marriage and important family disputes, for which she was deprived of her paternal inheritance. After being trained under the musical guidance of Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676), organist of the ducal chapel of San Marco, Antonia secretly married Lorenzo Bembo, a Venetian nobleman, from whom she had two children, and from whom in 1672 she herself asked divorce, due to the continuing absence of her husband, whom she also accused of continuing abuse and betrayal. She then moved to Paris, perhaps following the guitarist Francesco Corbetta, where she concentrated on music and composition, and where she had the opportunity to perform in the presence of Louis xiv, at the court of which she would find acceptance and protection until the end of her life. It is the fascinating story of a strong personality that sought and found it's way overcoming the difficult condition of a seventeenth century woman artist.