The Western Wyndes - Marc’Antonio Ingegneri: Motets for the Liturgical Year, Vol. 5 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The Cremonese composer Marc'Antonio Ingegneri (c. 1535/36-92) is chiefly remembered as the teacher of Claudio Monteverdi while, for well-nigh 500 years, his own achievements were left to sit in the shadows. This fourth in a series of pioneering recordings from the Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, presents a sequence of music for Holy Week and Easter, confirming Ingegneri to have been one of the masters of his age. The striking range of moods heard here will confound conventional expectations of Renaissance polyphony Ingegneri's emotional palette extends from tender intimacy in some of these motets to dancing, celebratory jubilation in the Mass setting - all of it music of breathtaking richness and beauty.

Micah Thomas' fifth album Lucid - featuring alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, trombonist Kalia Vandever, bassist Thomas Morgan, and drummer Lesley Mok - is, in large part, a pursuit of the feeling of balance. The phrases in his playing and writing here are dynamic in motion yet concise - not too long in any direction, just hanging in space perfectly. This album is also an exploration of the feeling of ecosystem and habitat - the idea that things are happening that seem independent and maybe even random, but that also give life to the things that are happening around them and form a unified picture despite the complete autonomy of all the parts. Everyone in this band has an acute awareness of where they are and where everyone else is, and the agility to go wherever they need to go when they need to. The seeming surface independence of the band belies a tight interconnectivity.

Another album presenting the output of Pawel Lukaszewski (DUX Lukaszewski Collection). The characteristic stylistic language of Lukaszewski is close to artists such as Arvo Pärt, John Tavener and Mikolaj Górecki, and at the same time it strongly refers to the pre-modern traditions of the Renaissance vocal music and Gregorian chant. InchAmong Polish composers younger than Penderecki and Lutoslawski, Lukaszewski has become by far the best known. Although he has composed orchestral and chamber music, his reputation is based on his sacred music. He is an ardent Roman Catholic and sets texts mostly in Latin, which, whatever it's difficulties, is for English-speaking listeners more accessible than Polish. He has accumulated an extensive discography and this latest album is listed as the fifth in a series called Musica sacra - though the earlier albums are not in fact all of sacred music.Inch (Stephen Barber, MusicWeb)