Concert Review of It's About Time
Rose Ensemble's music blooms with human feeling
by Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel music critic
June 20, 1999
The Rose Ensemble of Minneapolis slipped into town Saturday evening. Hardly anyone noticed; I counted 57 heads in St. Anthony's Church for the ensemble's concert of medieval and Renaissance a cappella chants and motets.
Too bad; this is a world-class group with a distinctive take on its repertoire. These 11 young singers, led by tenor and conductor Jordan Sramek, bring unusal warmth and humanity to music typically presented as pure and ideal. Their style was apparent from the start, in the cheeky, elegant flourishes that finished the phrases of the plainchant "Cantemus Domino."
They sang three numbers by Francisco Guerrero, in honor of the 400th anniversary of the Spanish composer's death. Guerrero's "Laudate Dominum de caelis" ("Praise the Lord from the heavens") is a wonder of contrapuntal texture, but Sramek saw more in it than that. Trios and quartets burst from the busy texture, to thrilling dramatic effect. That was an insightful interpretive decision on Sramek's part, and by no means an obvious one.
Sramek has a remarkable assembly of singers. Their rhythm is excellent; "Laudate" crackled with lively, impeccably measured Spanish rhythms. Pitch was right on throughout the evening, and the singers projected gloriously as soloists and blended beautifully as a group. Unlike many early-music choirs, the Rose Ensemble makes meters explicit, even in chant, and tints its music with distinct and sometimes strong feelings.
The ethereality the women brought to Hildegarde von Bingen's otherworldly "Hodie" contrasted sharply with the men's decidedly secular swagger in "Santa Maria Amar," a Spanish pilgrim's song from the Cantigas of Alfonso the Wise. The ardent solos of "Stabat iuxta Christi crucem" made clear that the words were not only a meditation on the maternal suffering of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but on the trials of mothers everywhere, starting with the pain of childbirth. They weren't just singing, here, they were testafyin'.
We think of chant of polyphony as spiritual music, and it is. But it is not just spiritual; the Rose Ensemble gave it to us body and soul.