The inspired bringing together of Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble has resulted in consistently inventive music making since 1993. It was the groundbreaking “Officium” album, with Garbarek’s saxophone as a free-ranging ‘fifth voice’ with the Ensemble, which gave the first indications of the musical scope and emotional power of this combination. “Mnemosyne”, 1998’s double album, took the story further, expanding the repertoire beyond ‘early music’ to embrace works both ancient and modern.
Now, after another decade of shared experiences, comes a third album from Garbarek/Hilliard, recorded, like its distinguished predecessors, in the Austrian monastery of St Gerold, with Manfred Eicher producing. Aptly titled, there is continuity in the music of “Officium Novum” and also some new departures. In ‘Occident/Orient’ spirit the album looks eastward, with Armenia as its vantage point and with the compositions and adaptations of Komitas as a central focus. The Hilliards have studied Komitas’s pieces, which draw upon both medieval sacred music and the bardic tradition of the Caucasus in the course of their visits to Armenia, and the modes of the music encourage some of Garbarek’s most impassioned playing. Works from many sources are drawn together as the musicians embark on their travels through time and over many lands. “Officium Novum” journeys from Yerevan to Byzantium, to Russia, France and Spain: all voyages embraced by the album’s dramaturgical flow, as the individual works are situated in a larger ‘compositional’ frame. (ECM Records)